Netizens have shared varying reactions to the story of a Texas mother’s claim that her late son’s skinned body has been put on public display in the Real Bodies exhibition in Las Vegas.
Kim Erick, 54, claimed that she immediately recognized 23-year-old Chris Todd Erick, who passed away from cyanide toxicity in 2012, among the plastinated cadavers in the exhibition. Organizers, however, have countered that the specimen in question has been ethically sourced.
The passing of Kim Erick’s son and its aftermath never felt right, and things turned worse when she saw photos of the Real Bodies exhibit
Image credits: Find a Grave
Chris Todd Erick passed on November 10, 2012, at his grandmother’s home in Midlothian, Texas, according to Unilad. Early reports blamed two heart attacks in his sleep caused by a heart defect.
Due to her grief, Kim Erick was not involved in his cremation. She only received a necklace with a small amount of ashes that were supposedly from Chris’s body. Soon, Erick became convinced that something was wrong.
Image credits: Kim Erick Smith/Facebook
She later obtained police photos showing a chair with straps, extensive bruising, lacerations, and dry cyanide salt on Chris’s lips. A later blood test revealed a lethal dose of cyanide. Because of these findings, the official cause of Chris’ passing was changed to cyanide toxicity, and the manner of his passing was ruled as self-inflicted.
Amidst these developments, Erick ended up shocked in 2018 when she saw photos from the Real Bodies exhibition. According to Erick, one skinless, posed figure looked exactly like her son.
Image credits: Find a Grave
“I knew it was him,” she told The Sun. “It was so unbelievably painful to look at. My words cannot describe how this shook me and my family to its core. I was actually looking at pictures of my son’s skinned, butchered body. It is gut-wrenching.”
Kim has since started a campaign to have the Real Bodies exhibit perform DNA testing on its display so she can find answers. The exhibition organizers, however, maintained that Erick’s allegations had no basis.
Image credits: Kim Erick Smith/Facebook
“We extend our sympathy to the family, but there is no factual basis for these allegations. The referenced specimen has been on continuous display in Las Vegas since 2004 and cannot be associated with the individual named in these claims.
All specimens are ethically sourced and biologically unidentifiable,” Imagine Exhibitions, Inc., which owns the Real Bodies exhibition, stated.
Erick’s claims have triggered conversations about grief, the use of cadavers for science, and mothers’ instinct on social media
Image credits: Kim Erick Smith/Facebook
Erick’s story sparked widespread online conversations. One netizen speculated that Erick “is probably just so drowned in grief she’s trying to grip on to anything she can.”
“It sounds like it’s not her boy. But I do feel for her and the rest of the family,” one commenter wrote.
Image credits: Kim Erick Smith/Facebook
Another said, “In my opinion, since she was not present during the cremation, she never had closure, thus understandable why she would react to the resemblance.”
A third one noted that loss makes people irrational. “Grief makes us believe things that are impossible sometimes; it alters the brain in ways that not even scientists and psychologists will ever fully comprehend,” the commenter stated.
Readers also pointed out that it should be easy for the organizers to provide evidence that its exhibit was not Erick’s son at all.
“The body would have been left to science by the person or the family, the museum would have paperwork on how they acquired it, they will have details and medical records too,” a commenter said.
Others, however, noted that it would probably be best for the museum organizers to do a DNA test, just so they could provide some closure to the grieving mother.
“I think the mom should have the right to do a DNA test just to give her peace of mind,” one netizen wrote. “If he is her son, then the museum has a lot of explaining to do, but if he is not her son, she probably will have some kind of peace of mind.”
The Real Bodies exhibition has caught controversy in the past
Image credits: Google Maps
This is not the first time that the Real Bodies exhibition faced controversy. Back in 2018, a group of lawyers, academics, and human rights campaigners attempted to get the exhibition shut down in Sydney, Australia.
Imagine Exhibitions noted that the bodies featured in the exhibition were unclaimed corpses that were sourced from China.
Image credits: Find a Grave
This concerned human rights activists, with the International Coalition to End Transplant A*use in China (ETAC) questioning if the bodies were ethically obtained, according to The Guardian.
Vaughan Macefield, a professor of physiology at Western Sydney University, argued that the specimens in the exhibition might have been political prisoners who were executed.
“Strong evidence supports the bodies and organs being exhibited having come from executed prisoners in China,” he said.
“These are mostly young males on display, quite different to the older donated bodies used to teach anatomy in Australian medical schools.”
Image credits: Kim Erick Smith/Facebook
Susie Hughes of the ETAC also questioned Imagine Exhibitions’ comment about the exhibits being from “unclaimed corpses.”
According to Hughes, Chinese hospitals wait 30 days before listing a body as unclaimed, but plastination demands action within 48 hours.
Netizens shared their thoughts on Kim Erick’s efforts to find the truth about her son’s fate on social media
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