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This company sells real human skulls. It claims all of its skulls are ethically sourced. How do you ethically source a human skull for sale to a random buyer? (www.skullsunlimited.com)

submitted 2 months ago by FlyingSquid@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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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?

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[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[-] Fester@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

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).

[-] Fester@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

I don't know about the law. I am only talking about ethics because the company claims it's ethical.

this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024

282 points (95.5% liked)

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