The Carnegie Science Center is going beyond mass media to publicize this month's arrival of "Bodies ... The Exhibition," the controversial but popular display of full-body human corpses from China that has been drawing large crowds at venues across the country.

This week, the science center is inviting several hundred hairdressers, cab and limo drivers, tour directors, hotel and restaurant workers and others who deal with the public every day for a free preview if the exhibit, which opens next Monday in the SportsWorks building. It's hoped they will talk up the show to clients and customers, generating the kind of grass-roots, word-of-mouth buzz money alone can't buy.

The center also is reaching out to other invited groups that could spread the word -- special previews will be held for medical professionals, school principals, superintendents and teachers.

"We're putting lists together from the phone book and Yellow Pages, looking on the Internet for people and places we want to target and invite," said Ann Metzger, the science center's director of marketing.

It's the first time the center has tried this approach, she said, but it's also the first time it has held an exhibit known for sparking so much interest and controversy.

The corpses in the "Bodies" exhibit have been flayed, dissected, plasticized -- in a process that replaces the body's water with polymers -- and posed, along with plasticized body parts, organs and entire internal systems.

The show's promoters and science center staffers say it offers an unprecedented educational opportunity for average people to see inside themselves in a way that used to be reserved for scientists.

Critics, citing China's human rights abuses, question who these plasticized people were, how they died and why the show used unclaimed cadavers whose owners or families could not give consent. One critic, former part-time education director Elaine Catz, resigned in protest three months ago.

Given the strong reactions the show evokes, the center is taking a chance that some of the invited potential buzz-makers might not like what they see.

"Their reactions may be positive or not so positive, but we just want to give them a chance to see it so they can talk to others about it," said Ms. Metzger.

"There's no magic number we need to hit for ticket sales, but we're projecting in excess of 300,000 visitors," she said, adding that advance sales are 7,500 so far, 6,000 of those to groups.

Most of Premier's venues for the show have been casinos, malls and rented halls.

"One of the key differences in Pittsburgh is that as a science center, we're able to provide a rich mix of programming and integrate the exhibit into more educational experiences," said Ms. Metzger.

For example, The Art and Science of the Human Body, a five-session course to be held on Thursday evenings starting in February at a cost of $100, will take class members to all four Carnegie museums and the University of Pittsburgh Medical School.

In addition, each month of the exhibit will feature a different theme such as noninvasive medicine, neuroscience or cardiology, with related programming for schools, said Ron Baillee, the center's education director. Experts will conduct special workshops for college students, middle and high school students and the public.

Middle-schoolers also will be able to attend a "medical mystery sleep-over" that will include a visit to "Bodies" to see what forensic experts look for when solving a crime, then a return to the main building to solve a mock murder through chemistry and biology experiments.

The center has been training 25 high school students to act as docents; they'll be staffing the galleries on weekends to share what they've learned with the public. Another group of 25 will enter training this month.