The Visible Human Project

The Visible Human Projectis a critical investigation of the spectacular, three-dimensional recordings of real human bodies- dissected, photographed and converted into visual data files- made by the US National Library of Medicine in Baltimore. Catherine Waldby uses new ideas from cultural studies, science studies and social studies of the computer to situate the Visible Human Project in its historical and cultural context, and to consider the meanings such an object has within a computerized culture. Bringing together medical conceptions of the human body with theories of visual culture from Foucault to Donna Haraway, Waldby links the VHP to a range of other biomedicalprojects, such as the Human Genome Project and cloning, which approach living bodies as data sources. She argues that the VHP is an example of the increasingly blurred distinction between 'living' and 'dead' human bodies, as the bodies it uses are digitally preserved as a resource for living bodies, and considers how computer-basedbiotechnologies affect both medical and non-medical meanings of the body's life and death, its location and its limits.