Von Hagens saws up sex corpses

Showman pathologist Dr. Gunther von Hagens has taken an unusual step to get round local decency laws - he's sawn up the stripped down bodies of a couple having sex, after a court banned him from putting the exhibits on display.

Von Hagens now plans to put just the most intimate body parts on show to get round the decency ban.

Critics say the beheading shows he doesn't care about the dignity of the volunteers who agree to be exhibited after death, and is just chasing more publicity.

The controversial anatomist and fedora-enthusiast saw his 'plastinated' exhibit of lovers - preserved by injecting medical plastic into their bodies - banned by town hall officials in Augsburg, Germany, for breaching public decency laws.

Both bodies were said by Body Worlds director von Hagens to be lung cancer patients, who volunteered their bodies to him before they died.

Now von Hagens plans to exhibit just the business section of the amorous corpses, still locked in the height of passion.

He commented: 'It was the expressions on the faces that the court objected to - so I have removed that problem.'"

How remarkably... efficient.... I love Germany and Germans, and realize occupying most of the center of a continent means they're going to have a disproportionately high population with a disproportionately high number of whack jobs; we certainly get our share mixed into our 300 million souls. Still, it's hard to read stuff like this (courtesy of a search for The Man with the Hat from xkcd) and not nod to myself a bit when I see the German dateline. I mean, I can't really say it makes the world "normal" again, but maybe a little less abnormal.