The German creator of the controversial "Body Worlds" anatomical exhibition said on Thursday he could not rule out having used the corpses of Chinese execution victims as a magazine alleged this week.
Fighting to save his reputation, Gunther von Hagens said he had legally obtained all the flayed bodies displayed in his show, visited by more than 10 million people around the world and met with fascination, disgust and moral outrage.
But he left some doubt about the origin of bodies processed by his company, saying: "I can't put my hand in the fire and say we weren't perhaps given one or the other execution victim."
Von Hagens was responding to a report in Der Spiegel magazine that said his company in China had purchased bodies of execution victims, recognisable by bullet holes in the head and incisions in the stomach through which organs had been removed.
"I think it is extremely unlikely," von Hagens, surrounded by preserved corpses, told reporters in Frankfurt at the museum where Body Worlds is showing. "I practically rule it out."
"I abide by German laws in that I do not accept corpses unless I know where they come from," he said.
Von Hagens insisted he received his corpses from institutes and state authorities across the world, but could not say for sure how each one of them had died.
Just to make sure, seven Chinese corpses which his company had acquired and found to have head injuries would be buried rather than preserved, he added.
He said he was "grateful" to Der Spiegel for "bringing into the public consciousness a business that has, up to now, been conducted in the shadows".
The German section of the International Society for Human Rights on Thursday demanded that the exhibition be closed until the exact origin of the Chinese corpses has been determined.
The public prosecutor's office in the south-western city of Heidelberg said this week it would check whether an inquiry should be launched into Der Spiegel's allegations.
Von Hagens' travelling show displays flayed corpses opened to show the internal organs, muscle and bone.
They are preserved by "plastination", a process he developed which replaces all body fluids with polymers to create odourless, long-lasting exhibits.
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