By Dana Bartholomew
Staff Writer

When veteran marathon runner Rena Chastan saw a human corpse posed in a noble, full sprint this summer at the Los Angeles debut of "Body Worlds," she vowed to join him in plastinated perpetuity.

"The minute I saw it, I just knew," said Chastan, 51, of Sunland, gazing at the skinless man preserved in plastic at the California Science Center exhibit in Exposition Park.

"To me, burial was not a choice. Cremation was a distant second. When I saw this, I knew it was my niche."

Chastan, who's run 26 marathons since turning 40, is among the first Americans to pledge their bodies to the Institute of Plastination in Heidelberg, Germany, which displays them for science and public education.

This week, 28 donors gathered among 25 actively posed bodies and other human specimens on vivid display at Dr. Gunther von Hagens' "Body Worlds: the Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies."

They had seen the preserved bodies -- with brains, hearts and other organs fully exposed. They'd also mulled the alternatives, traditional burial or cremation. In the end, they opted for plastic.

"Good to go ... I'm not going to change my mind," said Brian Muttee, 38, of Chatsworth, a 6-foot-7-inch hunter who gave up his desire for a Viking-style burial, adrift on a burning raft. He has requested that his dog, Tonka, be plastinated, too.

"I was going to ask its creator to pose me walking my dog."

Since the North American debut of "Body Worlds," the Science Center has drawn 155,000 visitors -- the highest number for any special exhibit, museum officials said.

And since the exhibit opened in 1996, 15 million people worldwide have ogled its pregnant woman, chess player and other artfully posed specimens.

In Los Angeles, 60 residents have signed donor cards, joining the more than 6,000 worldwide to pledge their bodies.

Von Hagens, the German scientist who invented the plastination process that injects liquid plastic polymers into biological tissue, called it the "democratization of anatomy."

"The time is over when lay people can learn anatomy from books," he said. "A real picture is worth a thousand words. But a real body is 5,000."

Many of the donors said they are not religious and do not believe in an afterlife. They simply wish to donate their bodies to science.

But many also said they wished to be preserved in poses reminiscent of -- or opposite -- themselves.

"I'm a martial artist, my wish would be in a fight -- kicking and fighting," said Corinna Cechi, a Los Angeles actress who believes she is a reincarnated Egyptian queen.

If plasticized, she said she would become a mummy a second time around.

Nicole Frank, 35, of Hollywood said she wanted to be captured in a unique American pose -- that of a vaudeville magician.

"Now that I know where my body goes," said the blue-haired hairdresser, "I am so relieved. No funeral. No weeping. No throwing themselves on the casket."

IF YOU GO: A panel discussion on the ethics of exhibiting human remains will be held from 1 to 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 2 in the Muses Room at the Wallis Annenberg Building, California Science Center at Exposition Park, 700 State Drive, Los Angeles. For reservations, call (213) 744-2420, or see californiasciencecenter.org.

http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~2409523,00.html