LONDON (Reuters) - A London exhibition of flayed human corpses that caused a storm of protest has prompted a rush of "body donors" who want to be preserved and displayed in the future.

More than 20 people in Britain have signed up to donate their bodies to an institute run by German professor Gunther von Hagens, whose chosen preservation method is to skin the corpse, splay its insides and put it on display to the public.

Juanita Carberry, a 77-year-old from Kenya, is convinced this is the right thing to do in death.

"The most certain thing about life is death," she told Reuters during an interview at the exhibition Monday. "And I believe in recycling everything that is recyclable."

"My body is a shell I live in. When I die I will have finished with it. If I can dispose of any part of my body for a useful purpose then that is great."

The Body Worlds exhibition, in London after having toured Japan, Germany, Belgium and Austria, consists of around 30 corpses displayed on stands in various poses designed to provoke, educate or shock.

The flagship piece is a horse and rider -- both skinned to display their muscles, bones and innards -- and then "plastinated" like all their other specimens to preserve them and fix them in a pose.

Von Hagens says he invented the "plastination" technique in 1977. The process involves soaking the corpse in formaldehyde, freezing it, thawing it and then dissecting it.

Fat and water are then removed and replaced with plastic, leaving them perfectly preserved, odorless, and both rigid and flexible enough to be free-standing.

When it first opened in March, the exhibition was slammed as a "freak show" with no artistic or educational value by some of the country's leading art critics.

It also prompted outrage among families of the victims of several scandals which have hit Britain in recent years in which organs and body parts were stolen by hospitals -- often from the corpses of children, babies or fetuses -- without any consent.

But von Hagens is delighted his exhibition has persuaded more people to donate their bodies in future. He sees it as an "appreciation " of his work, which he insists is about education not sensationalism.

Raymond Edwards, 51, said his decision to donate his body was about being in control.

"I want to take control of my death," he said. "And what better way is there to die happily? -- knowing that your body is going to go on to inform, educate and stimulate other people for years into the future."

Darren Mudd, a 35-year-old who admits that he hopes he still has "a long way to go" before he gets to the body donation stage -- said he saw it simply as "a different option to burial."