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?

Flying Squid@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 173 points – All Mammals
skullsunlimited.com

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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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

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.

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!

😞

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?