Dr. Roy Glover is giving a biology lesson, pointing to various places on the model that stands before him. It’s the human digestive system, split between two halves of a separated body.

"You can see that the liver is mostly on the right side, underneath the diaphragm," said Glover, Professor Emeritus of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Michigan. "Most people think their stomach is down here, but their stomach is much higher, underneath the ribs."

As his words are digested, the grisly reality of this educational experience cannot be denied: That the stomach he’s reaching inside the cavity to touch once digested food for the deceased human being that’s dissected before him. That the diaphragm he briefly acknowledges once helped pump oxygen through the dead man’s body. That the Dome in Rosslyn will be a revolutionary educational experience for some and an exploitive mortuary for others.

"Bodies…The Exhibition" began its run at the Dome (1101 Wilson Blvd.) last weekend and will be on display through Oct. 28. The controversial presentation — one of three similar shows that tours the United States — features human bodies and tissue permanently preserved through a technique called "polymer preservation," which uses liquid silicone rubber to prevent the onset of the natural decay process.

"People ask me how long they’ll last; they’ll last indefinitely," said Glover during a media tour of the gallery last week. "The silicone is inside of [the specimens], it’s hardened inside — there’s nothing here to decay anymore. All the fluids have been removed. The organs have been rubberized, right down to the cells."

The result is what the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote is "either a precious educational opportunity not to be missed or nothing more than a modern-day freak show."

Glover, the Chief Medical Advisor for "Bodies," prefers the former description. "We don’t realize what’s going on in our bodies," he said. "Bringing that cadaver — or the body — out of the laboratory in the medical school and into an exhibition space like this had generated a lot of interest. You’re amazed."

The "cadaver," doctor?

THE JOURNEY BEGAN with an ascent up a staircase in the shadow of a large neon green wall with the exhibition’s name on it. The funhouse feel sometimes makes the show play like a macabre version of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory: teaching life lessons as it titillates and horrifies.

Like Roald Dahl, Glover said "Bodies" is for adults and children. "It’s for parents to talk to their children. If they ever talk to them about health, this is the place to do it," he said, adding that over 3 million people have visited the exhibit and its offshoots.

Glover wrote the text for the information cards and placards that are found near each piece, which range from full bodies — stripped of skin and, in some cases, muscle and tissue — to individual organs and tissue that are found in large glass cases.

The bodies come from China, obtained through the Dalian Medical University Plastination Laboratories. According to Atlanta-based Premier Exhibitions, which puts on "Bodies," Asia possesses the largest and most highly competent group of dissectors in the world. Glover said the identities and causes of death of each specimen are on file with the medical schools that received them, but that the information is confidential.

Some medical information can be gleaned from the bodies themselves, such as a skeleton that had a broken arm. But Glover said it’s less about the histories of the specimens and more about our own medical pasts. "Everybody brings your own medical history here," he said. "I just had my colon looked at. That’s not the thing I tell everybody about, but diseases of the colon are silent killers until they become apparent to us. And by that time, it’s often too late."

"People are afraid to go to doctors. They’re afraid of what the doctors are going to say to them. They’re afraid of the environment that they’re going into. One of the things that our exhibition does is show that there are diseases that can affect our body that we aren’t aware of."

Like, for example, that Salisbury Steak over there.

IN A LARGE, dimly lit room in the "Bodies" exhibit, a few feet away from the skinless cadaver playing basketball, a large glass case contains several pieces of preserved human tissue. One of them looks very much like a 5-day-old chunk of meat from a high-school cafeteria. It’s labeled "Section of a Large Goiter." The card next to it reads: "Goiters are much less common today because iodine is included in most diets through iodinated salt."

Well, there’s a relief.

Glover said one of the challenges in writing the information for "Bodies" — supplemented through an audio tour for adults or children that comes with the price of admission — was to make it interesting for general and expert audiences. "You could write a whole book about this if you wanted to, so the question is what do you identify and what do you direct the visitors to see," he said. "It’s hard to know how to write it. You’re writing it for the public, so you don’t want to confuse them. But when you’re writing for a medical professional, you want them to be able to gain something from it as well. You write for the in-between audience."

For either audience, much of the information is of a cautionary nature. Indeed, it’s stunning to see how the ravages of smoking, overeating or other abuses of the human body affect our innards.

"They couldn’t figure out why, if you had bad lungs, why you had a bad heart. Well, it’s pretty obvious that the oxygen from your lungs goes to your entire body," he said.

Some of it can be squirm-inducing — such as cancer affecting the most sensitive of areas on a man — but the producers of "Bodies" have only made special arrangements for one section of its exhibit: one involving fetuses.

BECAUSE OF THE sensitive nature of the fetal and embryonic specimens, visitors can bypass that gallery near the end of the tour, according to Kerry Lynn Bohen of Brotman-Winter-Fried Communications, which handled publicity of the opening in Rosslyn.

For those who choose to witness that section, the visual is striking: rows of clear solid cylinders with fetuses the size of potatoes and embryos the size of breath mints. Lights underneath the cylinders reveal detail that only an exhibition using real tissue could, as small circulatory systems and skeletal structures are illuminated.

It’s something no photo in a text book or model in a biology class could reproduce for sheer power and lasting imagery — which is exactly what Glover said he hopes visitors will get out of "Bodies," along with a better understanding about where they came from and where they’re going.

"It’s a new way for you to look at yourself," he said.