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?
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 been to a museum and yes they sell real human skulls along with other types.
Just few pictures I took while I visited.
Donating your body to science is not the same as donating it to be sold on the open market. If it’s just sold on a website, sure, a scientist could buy it. But also a guy could buy it so he can fuck the eye sockets.
I can recommend the Last Week Tonight Episode about just this topic. At least in the US, there’s basically no difference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn7egDQ9lPg…fuck them for science, I hope.
To paraphrase Adam Savage: the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down
He talked about the guy who gave him that quote in a q&a this week. It was the show’s crime scene analyst Alec Jason.
And why should eye care if eye’m dead?
It’s not just about you. Your partner or parent or child or sibling might care.
The answer to OP’s question gets pretty obvious when you ask a different question: how can I ethically donate my corpse to some guy who wants to fuck my eye sockets? What do I have to do to ensure my wishes are upheld?
What if I want my children to take possession of my corpse? It’s not a part of my estate; creditors can’t take it from them. Once the probate process has been completed and my estate is completely disbursed, they can auction my corpse to the highest bidder, and keep the proceeds that would have otherwise gone to some filthy fucking financier.
Scientists and medical practitioners aren’t the only people who might want a human skull, nor should they be the only ones with access. An actor may wish to continue performing on stage as Yorick after their death, for example.
Whatever means available for me to monetize my corpse after my death would be an answer to OP’s question.
You are assuming the skulls this company sells were donated. They do not make that claim. They just say they were ethically sourced.
Donating your body to science is not the same as donating it to be sold on the open market.
In the US, it pretty much is the exact same thing though.
I want someone to drink mead out of my skull after I die and absorb my power. This is my fondest wish.
Describe your powers for a potential future buyer.
Honestly, yeah. I spent decades developing and maintaining it, hopefully will spend a few more decades with it, but after that? I have no use for it anymore, but if it’s still in decent condition, it would be a shame to waste it.
I’d rather have it be of some use to someone, and “drink mead out of it” is very high up the list, right after “use it for science or education” and right before “use it for semi-realistic (but doubly awesome) historical weapon tests or demos”. Other contenders are “deco piece”, “movie/theatre prop” and “ritual implement”.
Actually, that probably applies to most of my body. Reuse or repurpose as much as you can, turn the rest into fertiliser.
Failing that (if my spouse or family can’t stand the thought of cremating my remains, I don’t want to force them), at least bury me with some weapons. Not because I believe in Valhalla, I just want to troll some future archaeologist. Bonus points for mixing eras and qualities, e.g. a wallhanger 1700s cavalry sabre, weapons-grade Xiphos and a non-functional gun reproduction, dressed in a 900s Samurai armour.
Propably the same way universities get theirs. If you don’t get a passing grade you pass.
There is nothing you can do to my body that I will find disrespectful.
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.
Thank you yes! I think going into that piece I leaned towards the “dead is dead” philosophy but I think John Oliver changed my mind when he talked about the importance of dignity and ethical sourcing.
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.
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.
Historical digs, people donating bodies to science (but aren’t chosen to bomb tests), John/Jane doe.
I don’t think taking them from historical digs would be ethical (archaeologists certainly don’t), and people who donate their bodies for science are donating them for science, not for anyone to buy off of a website. So I don’t think either of those work here.
The article guy linked states that body donations are regulated at the state level, unlike organ donation. That means some states don’t regulate or poorly regulate body donations, and the organizations that accept donations are free to lie to donors and sell bodies and body parts to other organizations, like the military or who-the-fuck-knows. Without regulation, you can get some weirdo employee that just takes a skull after they’re done blowing up the body or studying it at Red State University and sells it privately.
Or it could be some weirdo died and his taxidermied great grandma from the box in the garage didn’t make the cut for the estate sale, so someone took it to the pawn shop. Watch the show Oddities. Fucked up shit gets bought and sold all the time.
See, that’s exactly why I’m thinking there really isn’t an ethical way to do this overall except in circumstances like great grandma (although even then, I’d call selling human body parts on the open market is pretty ethically questionable in general).
Yeah I agree it’s weird and unethical. Unfortunately that doesn’t mean it’s illegal.
I think it should be regulated at the federal level and everything that happens with a body donation should be transparent and traceable. That still wouldn’t affect the stuff that’s already in circulation and beyond identification though.
I don’t know about the law. I am only talking about ethics because the company claims it’s ethical.
Sorry, but I fail to see the problem with him owning a skull
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.
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
Alongside the story for “donating to science”, by proxy that donation can also be extended to other industries, like the arts.
There have been several stories of people donating their bodies to science, with the provision that their skull be used for Hamlet, or other shows where a bone may be used as a prop. I believe there was a story around a Polish pianist dedicating his skull to solely be used for a production of Hamlet, with David Tennant using his skull in the show.
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
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?
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.
Reminds me of the mummy
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.
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!
😞
Pickled brain
That’s the sort of thing I was thinking, unfortunately.
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.
more importantly, I don’t know why he would want such a thing
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. 🤷♂️
“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.
