No, I don’t want to buy one. This came out of a discussion about my brother, who is so much weirder than me if you can believe it, who owns a real human skull.
I don’t know how he got it. I don’t know where he got it from, maybe this company, more importantly, I don’t know why he would want such a thing. He is not a scientist, he works in IT. He did get an MFA in theater, wanted to be a professional theater director and loves Shakespeare, I can’t believe the reason was because he wanted Hamlet to be super authentic.
We’re not all that close, so it really hasn’t come up in conversation. I only know about it because he posted elsewhere a while back that he was on a Zoom meeting at work and he showed it off and couldn’t understand why everyone stopped laughing and got silent. So obviously he thinks it’s cool to own it.
It used to be a person. I’m an atheist and I don’t believe in an afterlife, but that’s just basic disrespect.
Anyway… how can you ethically source a skull and then sell it on the open market?
Anyway… how can you ethically source a skull and then sell it on the open market?
You pay an intern in your marketing department to write “ethically sourced” on all your customer facing surfaces.
That’s my concern here. Like how would they know if this isn’t similar to China harvesting organs from executed prisoners?
Not knowing just adds spice!
In theory? It’s all about traceability and consent, preferably with a third party auditing system. A good skull salesman should be able to provide you with documentation of the origin of your skull and the consent obtained, as well as a contact at their third-party auditing firm. if the skull is fair trade, they should also be able to provide evidence that they are paying above market rates for their skull harvesters.
Thank you kind sir and/or madame for providing a great deal more education on the human skull trade than I had ever intended to pursue!
I used to teach anatomy 20+ years ago. Sadly many of the skulls are sourced from the poorest people in impoverished countries. Companies pay a death benefit to the families or to the individual and then “harvest” the skull after death. They used to be priced based on the number of teeth and the presence of mandibular/maxillary degeneration. The highest priced skulls would come from donors and would have all their teeth.
Here’s a link to the UCLA scandal if you want to get a feeling for how scummy the entire industry is
That’s the sort of thing I was thinking, unfortunately.
So is there a guy that has to chop someone’s head off, strip all the flesh and then scoop the brain out??
I’m kinda hoping there’s an acid dip they do instead, cause that would be an awful job…
Most places to do it with insects. Sometimes they just leave them out but any organization with volume will use beetles.
Holy shit, this has to be one of the most insane things I’ve ever learned
That’s… almost worse. Ew.
Lol. Welcome to the underbelly of comparative anatomy.
Reminds me of the mummy
That is fascinating - thank you for taking the time to share :)
There’s probably someone else somewhere who has a “real human brain in a jar”, a couple people with “new” kidneys, corneas, a liver…
Gotta maximize profits!
😞
Okay… But… Outside of conflicts of interest, wouldn’t those families be worse off without this unconventional life insurance policy?
Are they any better off with it? I don’t the current rates but it used to be around a few pounds of rice. It’s desperation rates for desperate people.
If they aren’t better off, why wouldn’t they just say no?
Dude. Seriously?
Look, if someone cut me a cheque right now, for payment of my bones when I’m done with them I’d take it in an instant.
That’s not what’s happening here, those are likely bodies that didn’t meet the grade for medical/scientific use so they were sold off, which is gross and shitty.
However, bidding on my meat carcass starts at $5000.
Best I can offer is $10 for one of ya finger bones. I’m a nice guy though so you can pick which one. Deal?
Compelling, but I don’t want to break the set.
$20 for the full set. That’s $2 per finger bone.
The actual answer is pretty simple: Donating the body to “science”. Last Week Tonight recently made an entire episode about this: donating your organs and body and where it can end up (and especially in the case of donating the body, it can end up in all kinds of places).
So it’s ethically as in the people donated it and were aware of giving it away, but at least most of them certainly didn’t know that this is what their skulls could end up being used for.
TBF most people already have an ethically sourced human skull.
I didn’t consent to having a skull. Though it’s kinda grown on me.
Wait, you’ve had a skull grow on you? You’re boned
If you donate your body to science, and they sell the bits they can’t use to get money to do science, are you still fulfilling the original intent of the donation?
Is that what is happening though? And I would say that you should be made aware that is what will happen before you agree to donate.
John Oliver had an episode where the main story answers your question.
Basically, if you donate your body “to science” there’s a chance it could end up with such a company. I wouldn’t call it ethical, but as of now it’s legal.
Well that’s fucked. If I donate my body to science, it certianly isnt so my skull can sit in some dudes living room
There’s this woman who donated her body to science when she died ended up in the army being blown by IEDs.
You say that like it’s a bad thing?
I believe the science company sold her body to the military.
Well yeah, I figure when she signed her body up for science she was thinking about Medical Science and not Explosive Device Science…
I’d be totally okay with that, as long as he attempted necromancy
They only really say their skulls are legally obtained. i.e. it wasn’t stolen and no one was murdered for it.
We are committed to ethical sourcing. We follow all relevant laws and regulations to ensure that our specimens are obtained legally and responsibly.
Likely many of these are discarded donations to science, legally purchased from the organization doing the “discarding”. It absolutely does not follow that it was ethically sourced.
Unless you have traceability of each and every skull and a proof of informed consent (from the person whose skull it was, saying that they donate it for sale)for each skull there is no way to properly claim it was done ethically.
They are “Skulls Unlimited”.
I’m a little afraid that they have no limits to the skulls that they provide.
“What do you do? Oh, nice, sales! That’s cool. What do you sell?”
This is where I disagree with the rest of society. Dead people are dead and don’t have rights, so I don’t see how most skulls would be unethical.
So the real question is will it upset the living and how much do you want to accommodate those people’s feelings? I’m not sure there’s a clear and unambiguous answer to this question.
It’s always about the living and their feelings. The dead don’t care about nothin’ because they lack the ability
just wanted to note that the fundamental basic of civilization is burying your dead. at least according to archeologists. without honoring those who came before you, we are beasts.
We are beasts. The separation between humans and animals is pure mythology. This idea is part of that myth.
Making it a commercial business makes it unethical. Who’s to say they won’t be exploiting the poor, desperate people and twisting the legality, cross country loopholes to profit?
Do you think diamonds, lithium, rare metals are ethically sourced too, just because the retailer/marketing says so?
Does exploiting people for profits upset you? How many of the “most” need to be unethical to upset you?
Post like these confirm to people saying only the most lunatic fringe, out of touch with reality left reddit during/after the reddit controversy.
Fine, the dead are dead and don’t have rights.
But what about the living relatives and descendants do they have rights?
Dead person or dead person’s family donates his body to science. This is usually done under the agreement that when whatever organization is done sciencing with it, it will be respectfully disposed off(cremated or buried) or returned to the next of kin. It is not usually left to the whims of the organization to sell it like scrap parts.
Without traceability for each and every skull there is no assurance that this was done ethically. There are just so many hypothetical scenarios in which this could affect the rights of next of kin. If its not traceable, its not ethical.
I think it’s a murkier area than you’re thinking. What if the skull was of a slave or of a Holocaust victim? I think selling such skulls would be highly unethical.
Does it matter? I understand this could be emotionally sensitive for some people but the only reason I could see this being relevant is if my purchase somehow induced more slavery or genocide. That seems very unlikely—in fact I can think of a number of common purchases people make all the time without a second thought that are far more likely to encourage such crimes.
I would be concerned that a market would take place, where money could be made selling them, creating more incentives to acquire skulls… you see where this is going?
I think it does matter, yes. I think it’s exploiting a horrific tragedy. You don’t know why the person is buying it. Maybe the person is buying the Holocaust victim skull because they’re a Neo-Nazi and they intend to stomp on it at a party.
The possible future actions of a morally corrupt bigot have nothing to do with whether or not this collection of bones ought to be sold. I don’t think they should be sold just because I think it’s weird to purchase a person, even after death. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with donating said bones to a research lab. The person who died is gone. They no longer exist. Only their loved ones matter in that they may be upset by the use of their remains.
Bones are relics and relics only have the value we ascribe to them.
Would you say the same about an executed person’s organs if they had no next of kin? China should be free to harvest them like they do now? The person who died is gone.
The problem there isn’t the use of the organs, but that they’re murdering someone to harvest the organs.
How do you know the skull wasn’t harvested from the same prisoner?
One of the major markers of Homo sapiens becoming people, arguably the earliest and almost universally shared human ritual, is burying the dead. Respect for our dead.
Does everyone need a big ass casket in the ground? No. But going “it’s just emotional” to folks who were emotionally attached to someone who died is a bit flippant/reductionist for my taste.
Answer: They don’t.
The majority of these skulls are from people who donated their body to science. But instead of going to science, it goes to companies like this one that sell them. Legal, yes. Ethical, no.
Source that “most” are like this?
Doesn’t matter. Onus is on them to prove its ethically sourced and they fail miserably at that.
Nowhere on their website does it detail they have any sort of processes to ensure the skulls are sourced ethically. It doesn’t seem like any skulls are traceable or that any consent was given for the skulls to be sold commercially.
In fact this statement from their president seems to indicate what OP is saying is accurate.
All natural bone specimens are legally and ethically obtained. Suppliers World Wide send skulls that would otherwise be discarded or destroyed, as they are collected.
There is nothing you can do to my body that I will find disrespectful.
“that sounds awesome, I’d totally buy one!” i thought before looking at the price tags. I think I’ll stick with plastic.
That’s another thing I don’t want to know: how much my brother paid.
How much are they? The skulls never loaded for me, even on a VPN.
$2200-$2400, for the ones that were both complete and actually had price tags.
more importantly, I don’t know why he would want such a thing
Sorry, but I fail to see the problem with him owning a skull
I didn’t say there was a problem with him owning a skull. Other than how he’s weird about it, I mean.
I was talking about this company. I don’t even know how he got it. For all I know, someone who died willed it to him.
I don’t see how he is being weird about it. OK I wouldn’t show it to a zoom meeting full of random people, sure, but nothing else screams weird to me.
Then again, I work in IT have been described as weird by some people so I suppose I’m not looking at it like usual people would
That’s probably because you don’t know my brother.
Maybe
I think it is very unlikely that you know him. And certainly not as well as I do since, you know, I grew up with him.
I agree. I don’t know him. I meant that I don’t find him as weird as you do probably because I don’t know him as well
You don’t see anything ethically wrong with “owning” a piece of a human that could be someone’s ancestor or relative? People really are disgusting pieces of shit.
