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?
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.
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.
It’s always about the living and their feelings. The dead don’t care about nothin’ because they lack the ability
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.