Ask Lemmy

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.

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

TBF most people already have an ethically sourced human skull.

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.

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.

more importantly, I don't know why he would want such a thing

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.

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.

My friend is a medical librarian and stumbled across two full real skeletons being thrown away, she took their skulls. So yeah ethically sourced and she actually had a website where you could order different human bones left over from cadavers. So they're not that hard to source, a lot of people donate their body to science, which is good.

I consider myself to be my consciousness. When I die, I am gone. I have no emotional attachment to the body my consciousness existed in. I am an organ donor. I'd prefer my body go to help people, but if parts of it don't - I have no possible way to care.

I am probably not the only person who feels roughly like this. Seems plausible to me that you could ethically source human skulls. 🤷‍♂️

I’ve always wanted a human skull. I collect oddities, and it is a holy grail item for me. I have told my wife that I want my hand and skull handled by a master articulator that I know, so that I might live on as an occult tool.

My skull would be an ethically sourced skull whenever somebody buys me. Freaks like me are out there. And we give bomb head.

I want someone to drink mead out of my skull after I die and absorb my power. This is my fondest wish.

You could collect skulls after informed consent. People could potentially sell/donate the rights to their skull after they're done using it, with maybe some permission from next-of-kin, since they have a certain degree of claim as well.

If everyone agrees though, you could then ethically take that skull and sell it to a third party I suppose. It'd be somewhat similar mechanically to using remains for medical education and/or research, except without the noble cause or broader societal benefit.

Otherwise, in my eyes, this would qualify as grave-robbing and definitely be frowned upon. Nonetheless a fairly common practice throughout history though.

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.

They are "Skulls Unlimited".

I'm a little afraid that they have no limits to the skulls that they provide.

"that sounds awesome, I'd totally buy one!" i thought before looking at the price tags. I think I'll stick with plastic.

I'll bet 10:1 odds if you sent the DNA off to 23 and me it'd come back Uighur.

John Oliver did a show related to this. There doesn't seem to be a lot of restrictions on what can happen to your body once it has been donated.

Historical digs, people donating bodies to science (but aren't chosen to bomb tests), John/Jane doe.

I choose cremation but before, my penis will be removed and donated for politicizing as a gift to the world famous penis museum. It may not be much to look at, but maybe they can sell it as a chotchky or a keychain trinket. Maybe a guy will hang my jewels from his first cubicle to keep snacks. I'm creative, why not end as weird art. Right?

Not saying you and I would call it "ethical" but there are for profit companies who will pay for someone's funeral expenses to claim the body and sell it to researchers, universities, etc. So they didn't donate their body to science but their family sold it because they couldn't afford the service on their own.

Maybe not ethical, but legal, and therefore they may be able to claim it's "ethical" in advertising.

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.

Well, for the record I think it is super cool to own a skull but I belive it would be cery difficult to "rthically source"

I don't see the problem. Loads of people have skulls of other animals on display. Why should a human be treated any different.

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?