Tickets have gone on sale for the first public dissection of a human body in Britain for 170 years, with up to 500 people expected to attend.
The 'live' post-mortem examination will be performed by Prof Gunther von Hagens, the German doctor who opened his controversial Body Worlds exhibition in Britain this year. He has had a number of other exhibitions throughout the world.
Prof von Hagens pioneered plastination, a process which replaces body tissue with a plastic polymer, preserving organ detail to the cellular level. The process allows anatomical specimens to be preserved in a dry, odourless form for medical study, which is seen as a significant advance over traditional methods of preservation.
But Prof von Hagens has now made a career from using the process to create art from death. His works consist of dead human and animal bodies or body parts, manipulated and displayed as works of art.
Further controversy is expected with his dissection of a 33-year-old German woman, but the professor said the people who visited his exhibition welcomed the idea.
He said there had already been a huge amount of interest in the £12 tickets for next Wednesday's autopsy at the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane, east London.
He said the examination would be carried out in a totally professional and dignified way.
"People are becoming more and more interested in their bodies and how they work. "Body Worlds has brought the message to Britain that the body's interior is not ugly if it is preserved and presented properly," he said.
Professor von Hagens said the woman whose body was being used in the autopsy had her family consent.
He said he and his two assistants at the dissection hoped to discover the cause of death, but there were no suspicious circumstances and the body had been released by the coroner in Germany.
"She had epilepsy and died in June. It is possible that she died in an epileptic seizure so we will take a special interest in the brain," he said.
additional reporting PA