LONDON: A German scientist who caused a storm of protest with an exhibition of flayed human corpses is now looking for someone he can cut up and recreate as a new improved person.

The whole process — from the search for a donor through their death, dissection and reconstruction — will be broadcast on British television.

“This person will be a landmark human being,” said Gunther von Hagens, whose Body Worlds exhibition was slammed by critics as a sick freak show when it opened in London in March.

“They will pave the way for a future life with a more healthy, capable and longer lasting body,” he said in a statement released by the television company involved.

Von Hagens and his panel of experts are looking for a terminally ill patient who will die in the next few months.

The donor will be asked how his or her body has served them during their life and how it could have been better.

Once the donor dies, the body will be deep frozen and dissected. Within nine months, von Hagens’ team hopes to unveil the preserved corpse as a redesigned human being and put it on public display.

Von Hagens has said an ideal human being would have features such as spare vital organs and hyper-flexible joints.

“This is a serious, scientific and educational exercise, albeit a provocative one,” Nick Curwin, executive producer of the team which plans to film the project, said in a statement.

“Our donor will go down in history, preserved forever as what might have been if evolution had got us right.”

The Body Worlds exhibition, which has toured Japan, Germany, Belgium and Austria, consists of around 30 preserved corpses displayed in various poses. The flagship piece is a preserved horse and rider — both skinned to display their muscles, bones and innards.

Since the exhibition opened in London, at least 20 people in Britain have agreed to donate their bodies to von Hagens’ institute for future preservation.

Specialists working for the programme have already suggested improvements such as increasing the number of ribs to give better protection to internal organs, creating backward-bending knees to lessen wear and tear on the joints, rearranging the trachea and oesophagus to stop food going down the windpipe by mistake, and putting a “back-up” heart into the chest cavity.—Reuters / Guardian News Service