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 PR 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’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.
Same same same. I would love to have one, and I would absolutely be down to have mine preserved.
Also I study CS which is funny considering the “he works in IT” from the OP
Looks like they go for around $3000. That’s out of my price range.
Reminds me of this bit
Here’s a “fun” tidbit: even as late as the 1980’s it was cheaper for films to buy actual human remains than convincing fake skeletons. This happened famously in Poltergeist (1982).
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”
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.
We’re not all that close
Sounds like you should keep it that way lol, what kind of freak shows off a human skull?
not saying this about the brother, but as a more generic answer, Nazis sure love them. not only as insignia but also because they believe in phrenology.
We’re Jewish, so that is not the case here. It’s because he’s a super weird person.
You have no idea. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
Let’s just say that one of the least weird things about him is that he goes beyond veganism- he also won’t eat anything with salt or any sort of oil. No cooking with oil, no oil-based salad dressings.
How the fuck does someone even avoid salt?
I mean he doesn’t ever add any extra to his food. If it is naturally part of the thing he’s eating he can’t take it out obviously.
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.
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. 🤷♂️
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.
How about a source for any of it
Or any
Hell they can have mine if they want, if they put me out of my misery they can have it right now.
yeah, I don’t entirely understand resource hoarding after death, or accepting peer pressure from dead people. make me into cat food and coffee table decorations, or fertilizer, I don’t care
what I’d rather not is have my flesh pumped full of chemicals that make my resources unusable to the local biome for a few decades.
What kind of a bone headed idea is that?
Aww shit… here we go again
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.
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.
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.
…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.
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=Tn7egDQ9lPgDonating 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 been to a museum and yes they sell real human skulls along with other types.
Just few pictures I took while I visited.
I own a real human skull; my parents gave it to me
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.
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
That is fascinating - thank you for taking the time to share :)
That’s… almost worse. Ew.
Lol. Welcome to the underbelly of comparative anatomy.
Holy shit, this has to be one of the most insane things I’ve ever learned
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
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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.
