Human skulls are pierced with coffin nails and human bones are turned into Ouija board pieces, according to a Live Science investigation.
In the U.K., buying and selling human remains isn't a crime if the body parts aren't used for transplants and are posted on social media. The remains of adults, children, babies and fetuses are available for purchase.
50 sellers across England and Wales used social media to sell human remains. Many of the sellers offered multiple human remains through public Facebook andInstagram pages associated with antiques, curiosities and taxidermy businesses, including physical shops.
Unless the bones had been cleaned and prepared for learning or study in the past, sellers and Collectors typically post unaltered human remains. Live Science found that the remains had been badly damaged.
A picture of a human skull with the words "kill me" carved into it was posted by a seller on the social media site. The skull was turned into a lamp. A picture of an altered skull was posted on October 17, 2021. He said the skull was carved by a fellow collector and was from Europe.
There are more human skull lamps shared by other sellers. There were also skulls that looked like they were made to look like a vampire.
The Bronze Age tomb contains human remains and a stone.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook andInstagram, prohibits the sale of body parts and bodily fluids on its platforms, but the human remains trade seems to be thriving on the two sites. A Meta spokesman told Live Science that they have removed the violating content brought to their attention.
The role of social media in the human remains trade is not new. An investigation by Live Science found that U.S. sellers were offering up skulls and other human remains in private Facebook groups. When they become aware that a group has violated their policies, they take action against them.
The Live Science investigation found that most of the human skulls and bones were from decades ago. There are likely thousands of human skeletons from medical education sources in private possession in the U.K., with medical students encouraged to buy bones for their studies in the 20th century. It's difficult to know where human remains come from because they are sold with little to no background and can circulate in the trade for a long time.
It is against the law to disturb a place where remains have been formally laid to rest without a license. The people who died didn't give their consent for their remains to be used in this way.
Shawn Graham told Live Science that no one would consent to having their body bought and sold.
Graham uses images from sellers to track the global trade in human remains. It's in their interest to offer real human remains but also because replicas are easy to spot. Live Science did not verify the authenticity of the remains in person, but they did show the images of the remains to the experts, who thought they were real.
The first image of two.
Black-stained human skulls with iron nails for teeth, human bone wind chime and Ouija board planchettes, and wallet crafted from human and pig skin are some of the items offered by one popular seller. There is an online store and a museum called "Curiosities from the 5th Corner" in Essex, England, where the seller sells his wares.
Scragg didn't reply to Live Science's questions, but he did post a picture of a human skin wallet on his social media accounts. Why don't you? worms, bugs and micro organisms feast on this perfectly good flesh when it can be used to create appreciated objects, so why should we not use it?
Some of the human skulls Live Science uncovered are thought to have come from people who died violently. Scragg offered two skulls for sale that appeared to have been shot.
Scragg stated in a March 29 social media post that one of the skulls was most likely from a suicide victim, and the other was an executed prisoner from China. The gunshot wounds in the photos were noted by two forensic scientists, but they could not say if the claims about the deaths were true. The alleged prisoner's skull had at least two gunshot wounds with an entry to the back of the head, which is a common location in executions.
The third skull had injuries that were compatible with blunt force to the head around the time of death. If you're hit by a baseball bat, for example, or if you fall from a height and hit the ground, you can suffer a blunt- force injury. The force seems to have been against the surface. "It could be an accidental death, but definitely violent in nature," he said in an email.
According to the forensic scientists, all three skulls were cleaned and prepared for teaching or study, and are most likely retired medical or anatomic specimen.
Existing U.K. legislation ignores the buying and selling of human remains Human body parts can be bought and sold by anyone if they don't use them for transplants and don't acquire the remains illegally. The remains aren't technically property so they can't legally be owned.
According to a 2003 report by the Working Group on Human Remains for the U.K. government, if a descendant of a dead person walks into a museum and takes the remains, that may not be considered theft. Human remains can become legal property in certain circumstances.
Heather Conway is a professor of property law and death studies at Queen's University in Northern Ireland.
There are legal precedents for this. According to a 1998 commentary, the Court of Appeal for England and Wales upheld a conviction against an artist who stole anatomical specimen from the Royal College of Surgeons in London on the grounds that the college's application of skill to create the specimen made them property and that taking them was therefore theft.
The destruction of human remains that have acquired property status could be considered criminal damage.
All human remains should be treated with respect and dignity according to the U.K. government's Human Tissue Authority.
A person can be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison if they are found guilty of defacing a statue or memorial.
"I don't think it's right that we have offenses relating to the destruction of monuments, but not the destruction of people," Jones said.
The Sexual Offences Act 2003 makes it illegal to have sex with a corpse. According to Jones, tampering with human remains in public can be a crime.
The Associated Press reported in 1989 that earrings made from freeze-dried human fetus were an outrage to public decency. The artist and the gallery curator were both fined hundreds of dollars.
Live Science found several preserved human fetuses for sale online, along with the skeletons of babies and children in private collections, as well as the preserved human fetus in a picture of a private collection. The 1989 case shows a legal precedent for modifying human remains outraging the public.
There are laws that may affect the sharing of images of dead people. Jones pointed to the Obscene Publications Act 1959 in the United Kingdom. The Communications Act 2003 in the U.K. covers messages and other things that are offensive or menacing through a public electronic communications network. There is no law that forbids the removal of a corpse.
Live Science saw a lot of human remains that had been processed. There are pictures of bones next to boxes with the names of medical supply companies on them. The person didn't reply to the request for comment.
Medical students may have been helped by the human remains held by private collectors. Some sellers claim that their past makes them ethical.
A paleopathologist at the University of Cambridge told Live Science that they weren't ethicallysourced in the beginning. The sale and trade of human remains and the objectification and commodification of the dead are investigated by the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology.
In the late 1700s, London gangs dug up dead bodies and sold them to teachers. According to the UK Parliament, the teachers and students stole bodies themselves.
The trade came under scrutiny in the late 1820s when it was discovered that two men called William Burke and William Hare were killing people to supply bodies to the University of Edinburgh's anatomy department. The University of Edinburgh said that Burke's skin was turned into a notebook after he was executed.
Making body donation legal, as well as establishing a new legal source of bodies, was one of the goals of the Anatomy Act. The U.K. began to get its medical bones from India after the 19th century because of the increased demand for bodies.
The Chicago Tribune reported in 1985 that in 1984 India exported about 60,000 skeletons and skulls to Britain and other European countries for medical students.
Many of the bodies that are now traded came from poor communities. They couldn't afford the cremation ceremony so they had to take away their dead. It's sad.
The U.K. and India had similar links to grave robbing. According to a bioarchaeologist at the Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute, most of the time the graves were robbed for the skeletons. It was not ethical.
Europeans were able to get to India's skeletons because it was a British colony. India gained independence from the British in 1947. The United Kingdom's main source of human remains after it became independent was India.
The Indian government banned the export of skeletons in 1985 after a trader was arrested. In 2007, an investigative reporter for WIRED said that children were kidnapped and killed for their bones.
According to Live Science, the trade out of India continues today, but it's much less than before the ban in 1985. According to the BABAO website, China was a mass exporter of human skeletons in the 20th century.
The acquisition of human remains in universities and museums is unethical. Many of the collections were populated with colonized bodies, but also the poor who had no choice, the shirless, and the different ethnicities. All of them were put into collections that were not ethical.
Body and organ donation requires personal informed consent according to the Human Tissue Act. Human remains are used for medical treatment, post mortem examination, education and training, and display in public to ensure that they are treated with dignity. If the remains are less than 100 years old, a license is required that must include proof of consent from the deceased, but this doesn't apply to the remains of people who have been dead for more than 100 years.
There are no rules in private ownership. The statement from the HTA is provided at the bottom of the story.
Two sellers told Live Science that they wouldn't disrespect human remains in their possession and that many private collectors probably treat ex- medical remains with more respect than they would have received in places of learning or study.
Chris Bull said he tries to treat them with as much respect as possible. He thinks that means not doing anything stupid with them.
Mattaeus Ball, an online seller from Reading, told Live Science that he too has respect for human remains and won't do anything "grotesque" with them.
"These were people that were exploited for the medical industry and once we were finished with them, drawing all over them, writing on the bones, cutting them up, they've just been discarded."
There is still a demand for skeletons in academics. BABAO tries to get the specimen to the collection that needs it the most. Human skulls and bones from the public can be used for educational purposes.
Even with people donating their bodies to medical science, there is still a shortage of skeletons in many institutions.
Some people buy human remains because they don't have a lab budget. Human bones and skulls originally acquired for learning and study can be used for teaching. Human remains won't be returned to private collection if this happens, according to Biers.
It is difficult and expensive to repatriate human remains that were acquired for the medical industry. Most of the skulls and bones will never be laid to rest in their homelands because of the scale of trade.
There is a movement to figure out if there is a way to get some of these bodies back. "You're talking a lot of bodies over a long period of time."
Live Science is investigating the trade of human remains in the U.K.
Live Science received a statement from the HTA.
The Human Tissue Act regulates the authority. The activities that use human tissue must be licensed and subject to regulatory oversight. Human tissue is removed, stored, and used for research, patient treatment, post-mortem examination, and surgical training. Appropriate consent is required for these activities to happen. There are four guiding principles for the use of human tissue in the Code of Practice A. Four principles of consent, dignity, quality, and honesty and openness should guide the actions of anyone undertaking activities that fall within the purview of the HTA.
Human tissue can be subject to regulation by the Human Tissue Authority depending on the age of the material and the period for which it has been held.
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