Overview
- Martina Grabsch, who lived with a severely diseased heart for about 30 years, asked the plastination firm to preserve the organ removed during her transplant and was handed the finished specimen this week.
- The Guben-based company said the decision was exceptional because it normally prepares specimens for institutions rather than private owners and framed the return as a gift tied to the firm’s anniversary.
- Plastination replaced the heart’s fluids with silicone rubber to produce a durable teaching specimen and the finished plastinate shows surgical sutures and a bovine-skin patch that document decades of repairs.
- Grabsch says she is recovering well with the donor heart, plans to display the plastinate on a small shrine in her home, and expects the family’s use of the organ in paramedic training to give it educational value.
- The case highlights how German plastination techniques are used in medical teaching and revives ethical questions about private possession of human tissue even as supporters stress its instructional and personal meaning.