N.Y. official investigates popular cadaver exhibit

One of the exhibits is on display at a Cincinnati museum.

NEW YORK (AP) — The company running popular exhibits of human cadavers — with one currently on display at the Cincinnati Museum Center — is under investigation by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to determine where the bodies and body parts came from.

Cuomo spokesman Steven Cohen confirms that subpoenas have been issued to Premier Exhibitions Inc. but the office has drawn no conclusions.

The exhibit by Atlanta-based Premier Exhibitions Inc. shows preserved cadavers in different poses.

A Premier spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Premier Exhibitions told ABC News it would cooperate fully.

There have been complaints and protests against various cadaver displays from critics who say Chinese citizens whose bodies or body parts are used never agreed to let their remains be displayed.

ABC News reported Friday that the doctor behind a similar exhibit, “Body Worlds,” stopped using bodies from China for fear that some of them may be executed prisoners. Dr. Gunther von Hagens told ABC’s “20/20” that he had to destroy some bodies he had received from China because they had injuries that made him suspect they had died in executions.

The exhibit in Cincinnati, Premier’s “Bodies ... The Exhibition,” opened Feb. 1 and runs through Sept. 1.

Cheryl Mure, Premier Exhibitions’ education director, said in January that the specimens are unclaimed or unidentified bodies from a medical school laboratory in China and that the bodies were obtained legally.

The exhibit brought in record attendance for the museum on its opening weekend, despite the area’s Roman Catholic archbishop calling it an “unseemly” public exhibition of “unclaimed, unreverenced, and unidentified” bodies.

Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk had said the church maintains that dead bodies must be treated in a way that recognizes the dignity of the human person.