Von Hagens is searching for volunteers with only weeks or months to live who want him to preserve their bodies and then correct the “faults” of evolution.
Modifications being suggested include a fully-rotating neck for all-round vision, or — if the subject is female — making the birth canal exit at the navel.
The programme, Futurehuman, will be shown by Channel 4. Candidates will be filmed as they are interviewed, assessed and eliminated if they are unsuitable.
The documentary is being made by Mentorn, the television company that filmed Von Hagens’s live autopsy in London, which received 150 complaints when it was screened by Channel 4 last November.
Von Hagens, whose Bodyworlds exhibition of skinned human corpses was banned by Edinburgh council last week, said: “I am looking for a mentally strong person who can explain himself to me. I do not want to be criticised afterwards, and I want to talk in life with him and answer that person’s enquiries.
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“I am a medical doctor, and this is an earnest scientific endeavour to find a person who will become a landmark body for history, an example of how future generations could improve the human body.”
However, his scientific justification of the work has not convinced critics of the programme. John Beyer, director of Mediawatch UK, the viewers’ watchdog organisation, said it would be seen by many as offensive.
“It sounds like the Munsters and will cause considerable offense with no scientific validity,” he said. “Seeing dying candidates effectively being voted off by the programme organisers is beyond the pale, and Channel 4 should reconsider this commission.”
Nick Curwin, executive producer of Futurehuman, said that the interview and elimination process was important because people with too long to live would not be suitable.
“We will need somebody who has some sense of when they are likely to die,” he said. “There is no way around it: if they are in perfectly good health and 24 years old, they are not suitable. But if someone has been advised they have a few weeks or months to live, they could be part of this.”
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The volunteers will have a chance to ask von Hagens questions about what would happen after their death, and about his “plastination” process, which takes 1,000 hours to preserve the body after it has been deep-frozen. The chosen person, and his or her family, will then be asked to sign legal consent forms.
While they wait for the subject to die, a panel of scientific experts will decide what modifications will make the body superhuman. Professor Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, has suggested that the retina of the eyes should be reversed because the light-sensitive part is “on the wrong side of the film”.
Another member of the panel, Professor S Jay Olshansky, from the University of Illinois in Chicago, said the knee joints, which only last up to eight decades, could be reversed and improved, and the windpipe modified to stop people choking on food.
Volunteers will be able to apply through leaflets distributed after performances of Corpus, an Edinburgh fringe theatre show based on the Bodyworlds exhibition.
Once completed, the body will be displayed in the Dana wing of the Science Museum in London, which is dedicated to cutting-edge science.
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A spokesman for Channel 4 defended the programme as a legitimate scientific study. “The selection process will only be a small part, and it is as much about us talking to people’s families and them choosing us. Gunther always attracts interest and provokes debate, but he is just the technician. This is science, not entertainment.” oA British illusionist plans to play Russian roulette on live television. Derren Brown, who describes himself as an expert in “psychological magic”, will ask a member of the public to load a single bullet into a six-chamber revolver.
Holding the gun to his head, Brown will repeatedly pull the trigger until, using “the power of mind control” he senses he has reached the loaded chamber. Then — if all goes according to plan — he will fire the bullet into the air.
The stunt, which will be broadcast on Channel 4, has already been criticised for glamorising violence and is likely to be closely monitored by television watchdogs.
Last week Channel 4 started publicising the stunt in a series of advertisements and initiated the search for a viewer who is prepared to load the revolver.