His invention is a process called plastination: he replaces the body fluids and tissue of corpses with plastic polymer or resin to prevent decay, then shapes the bodies into a pose. The exhibition has attracted more than a million visitors and many of them are happily signing up to leave their own bodies to Professor Von Hagen to be immortalised in plastic resin.

The Catholic church wanted the corpses withdrawn from exhibition, to be given a proper burial. Von Hagen counters by arguing that, as a result of his interventions, they are no longer corpses but anonymous specimens of anatomy.