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Bodies Exhibitions Face Possible Ban in California

Proposed Law Would Outlaw Display of Unclaimed Bodies from China

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In the wake of the 20/20 report, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo launched his own investigation and found that Premier could not prove that the bodies on display were not those of executed prisoners. Cuomo and Premier reached a settlement that requires the company to post a disclaimer at its New York exhibit and on the exhibit's website stating the attorney general's finding. The settlement also requires that the company obtain documentation "demonstrating the cause of death and origins of the cadavers" as well as written consent from the donors.

Premier says in its promotional material that it gets the bodies from Dalian Medical University plastination laboratories. Corporate records show that Premier loaned the bodies from Sui, a professor at the university.

When 20/20 called Dalian Medical University in February, the university's president said that the institution had never supplied any bodies to any American company, although the university did at one time supply bodies to Gunther von Hagens, the German doctor who invented plastination. Von Hagens says he no longer uses Chinese bodies for plastination because of the country's controversial human rights record.

ABC News traveled to Sui's plastination laboratory, about an hour's drive outside the city of Dalian, and found that bodies were being plastinated out of a private company's warehouse on a back alley in an industrial zone.

Click Here for the Investigative Homepage.

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