The Digitized Man

Joseph Jernigan's arrest photo

On August 5, 1993, a few minutes past midnight, Joseph Paul Jernigan lay strapped down on a gurney in the execution chamber of the Huntsville State Prison in Texas. Ten years ago, he had been convicted of murder and sentenced to die. All of his appeals had been denied and he knew he would soon be dead. 

Before the deadly needle was pushed into his arm, he confessed that he was indeed guilty of the vicious murder of a 75-year-old man. While he and an accomplice were in the process of stealing a microwave oven, the homeowner unexpectedly returned. Even though the old, infirm gentleman offered no danger to the thieves, Jernigan, afraid he would identify them, repeatedly beat him in the head with a heavy ashtray, then stabbed him multiple times in the heart with a butcher knife he found in the kitchen and then blew a large hole in his chest with a shotgun blast.

Like most condemned prisoners, Jernigan found religion as his death date drew near. A priest convinced him to repay society by donating his body to science. As he lay on the gurney, he had no idea what was to become of his donated corpse, but at that very moment, a team of researchers was eagerly waiting.

After execution, his body was prepared for travel, air freighted to a lab in Colorado (postage, $201.88) and exactly 8 hours later, became the property of The Center for Human Simulation. The goal of the organization was to digitize an entire cadaver into a versatile, medically accurate, three-dimensional model of human anatomy. Joseph Paul Jernigan would become the new definition of man.

Jernigan's thorax

Sparing you the very gross process it took to render, the whole of Jernigan's body (except for a missing appendix and one testicle) was cut into pieces and then eventually sliced into thousands of individual slices thinner than a piece of pre-wrapped cheese. It took 9 months to complete. Each slice was then photographed and subjected to CT and MRI scans. 

Once this process was completed, he was reconstituted into 15 gigabytes of data and made available on the internet. Once there, the convicted murderer was reincarnated into the Visible Human, an interactive model that can be explored by anyone with a web browser. 

Joseph Paul Jernigan now lives on via computers all over the world and anyone who cares to, can enjoy fly-throughs of his body - his bones, his brain, his heart, and even his one testicle. Few, however, know they are actually looking at a convicted murderer.