Can You Legally Buy a Real Human Skeleton?

judging by your comments I'm clearly the second most popular presenter on this channel with my good friend mr. head here winning himself a legion of fans I guess I'm just not as hip Richard or dick to his friends is a skeleton I bought off Amazon and performed some experimental surgery on he's fine but have you ever wondered how medical students learn bone Anatomy in the first place if you picture a stereotypical Medical School classroom in a TV show or a movie doctor's office you're invariably going to see a full-size dick standing upright in the corner but where do those skeletons come from is buying a real human skeleton even legal nowadays most are synthetic but the mass-produced ones like dick here are no substitute for the real thing they don't have all the tiny details that are so important to learn from and any of the variations that we see in normal people because they're all made from a single cast for hundreds of years doctors have depended on real human bones to learn from you've probably heard the gruesome tales of grave robbing in the 19th century in Great Britain medical schools insatiable hunger for fresh corpses to die six led to the deceased being disturbed mere hours after consignment to the earth or in some infamous cases nefarious entrepreneurs deciding that waiting for a natural death simply took too long but those horrific days are long behind us right well in present-day India history is repeating itself [Music] as the modern medical era was ushered in British surgeons led the charge to base their treatments on real Anatomy instead of the centuries of guesswork that had preceded them but to do this they needed a regular supply of corpses giving rise to the resurrectionists as grave robbers were known but in 1832 the Anatomy Act was passed in the UK effectively ending this trade however by then the East India Company's presence in India had grown considerably and soon a fresh business model was set up in India processing and disposal of dead bodies was regarded as a low-cost job left to some of the poorest members of the community the promise of some extra cash was a no-brainer quite literally a face skull had been requested and soon India where dead bodies were no short supply was the source of most of the specimens coming to the UK America and Europe and that the center of this supply chain was the eastern city of Kolkata or as it was then known Calcutta obviously corpses would never survive a trip to England so instead Indian suppliers became experts in processing skeletons they developed a reputation for producing high-quality fully articulated complete skeletons bleached to a brilliant white buyers didn't ask where the skeletons came from nor did the vendors say one company recognized a reverse billing of its founder Shanker Sen was the largest exporter of human goods anywhere in the world and became a well known brand with affluent descendants today medics at least here in the UK will be familiar with the name Adam Hui as the makers of just about every anatomical model found in hospitals across the country but they started by selling real human teaching specimens their website documents their close link to wreck Nath I find it quite remarkable that between the 1930s and 1990s British medical students especially right here in London where Adam Hui was based learned their Anatomy almost exclusively from the bones of Bengalis that had seen better days and they continue to be used maybe even I learned my Anatomy from one of my ancestors this roaring trade continued at a pace in 1984 in their exported 60,000 skulls to America alone Calculus bone factories revenue exceeded a million US dollars the ravenous hunger for bones meant that simply scouring city mortuaries for unclaimed bodies would not meet the demand just as 150 years prior England the bone merchants of Calcutta headed to the cemeteries and funeral pyres ready to pounce as soon as the grieving family had departed but everything changed in 1985 when a dealer was caught exporting 1,500 child skeletons of unknown provenance to have this many young skeletons more expensive due to their rarity in a country where children go missing often was highly suspicious there was a public outcry and the export of human remains was rapidly banned despite protestations from American and European medical schools in subsequent years buyers now predominantly in the USA turned to China and the Soviet Union but they simply didn't have the expertise and the specimens preparation was regarded as inferior slowly but surely the trade returned to India only now it was under the dissection table and behind closed doors I'd like to be clear about one thing while India became the world leader in exporting skeletons it certainly does not stand alone in the dark practices of body snatching I'll put some links in the description about what I consider far more macabre scandals in the US where body parts were removed sometimes without consent for use in own grafts which were put into other people without adequate checks and the bodies returned to their families with PVC pipes in place of leg bones the UK was rocked by an awful scandal when 850 babies had their organs removed without consent between 1988 to 1995 many human bones are now illegally sourced from African countries unlike India China does not have a Free Press so we hear far less about what's going on there but a litany of stories suggest a state-sponsored program of organ harvesting from prisoners this illegal trade in human body parts was exposed in Scott Connie's [ __ ] buying in brilliant book the red market where each chapter is about a different human organ or tissue bought and sold as a commodity all over the world while the illegal trade in kidneys and similar solid organs has become a common trope in Bollywood films I had never really given any thought to where the bones that we learned from a medical school came from I guess I just assumed that they were local people who had donated their bodies to medicine but the processing itself is a long and messy and complicated affair that simply isn't done in the West Scots investigated the trade about 12 years ago including visiting a shop in Calcutta called young brothers who like retinas had been in the business for many decades but unlike recognize they appear to have weathered the export ban and continued to trade indeed as their main source of human material in India today so after the excitement of Calcutta's biggest festival in October of 2019 had wrapped up and I had a spare day I donned my new investigative journalist cap and off I went Scott describes young brothers in his book tucked away on a side street between one of Calcutta's largest graveyards and its busiest hospitals young brothers headquarters looks more like an abandoned warehouse than a leading distributor of human skeletons the rusted front gate appears to have been pad locked and forgotten a decade ago above the entrance the company's sign is a tableau of peeling paint but it wasn't always this way the building was bustling with activity in 2001 according to the Calcutta Health Department chief at the time neighbors complained that the young brothers offices stank of death huge piles of bones lay drying on the roof in 2001 when the police refused to file a case against young brothers Khan raided the building with a posse of bamboo wielding heavies there were two rooms full of skeletons Khan told me it took five trucks to haul them away he also seized thousands of documents including invoices to companies all around the world they were sending shipments to Thailand Brazil Europe and the United States he's sixteen years after the export ban it was as if the law had never taken effect 12 years later the headquarters had become even more anonymous when Scott talked to the owner of Enosh iron back in 2007 he said that the company no longer sells human bones merely plastic models their website does indeed boast quite an incredible range of models but there clearly is a section offering the sale of real human bones being new to this investigative journalism game I haven't really thought my plan through until I found myself knocking on the door a huge dog and security guard open did a crack and I decided instead of trying to speak any Bengali as I've never passed as a local I'd use my ethnically ambiguous face and pose as dr. Francis a British lecturer interested in making a purchase for my medical school none of which is untrue the guard inspected me suspiciously craned his head out of the door looked around and when satisfied that I was alone and physically yanked me inside I was led into an unassuming hot and desperately cluttered office there was nothing at all to suggest what business operated from within except a few desiccated metacarpals or hand bones that sat atop a pile of papers a middle-aged lady in a sari sat by a computer so old it probably remembered the pre-1985 company heyday a very friendly man greeted me and we talked for about half an hour no coincidence that young brothers is so close I had a long chat with the guy inside his house from the outside I mean [Music] ideally go if I want to take some specimens back to England then that's on me and my problem and I suppose that's fair enough I asked if they have other clients in the UK and they said they weren't able to they've all said information there's nothing I can which were all of synthetic models the ranges the wildering they said that the cheaper less lower quality stuff comes from China our dialogue becomes almost inaudible at this point unfortunately I asked are they unclaimed bodies or are they donated with consent to which he said yes so I tried to clarify so you're saying that these are all unclaimed bodies and he can that there are many unclaimed bodies in Calcutta now I don't know if that's true statistics are very hard to come by but compared to the 1990s when I saw way more people sleeping on the streets in Calcutta I would be surprised if there are that many dead bodies with nobody to speak for them raising the possibility that bodies are being sourced from elsewhere so I just came out and asked if they have ever obtained bodies from graveyards which he denied I don't know if giving you actual contact details is one of the golden rules of investigative journalism that you're not supposed to breach this I guess I know that one of the rules you're definitely not supposed to break is to forget to put a memory card in your camera and sure enough that's what I did which is why this is all on my phone so I guess I'll stick to doctoring from now on I asked after Venetia on the owner that had reluctantly spoken to Scott years ago I was told that he was upstairs but currently extremely unwell and asleep so I couldn't quiz him directly on whether he had any skeletons in the closet the man I spoke to said that he would discuss my order with the boss when he's awake and get back to me he never did when researching this video I spoke to current Indian medical students and graduates skeletons are still easily purchasable for far less than I was quoted and there remains a general policy of Don't Ask Don't Tell even medical students in places like Stanford said their professor had told them that the bones they used for teaching were sourced from India pre-1985 chatting to people directly in Calcutta there is certainly no suggestion that anybody's being killed which was strongly suspected decades ago but the understaffed and underfunded police in India turn a blind eye to what they probably consider a minor crime the victims are dead after all and this is just a purely personal observation here but in Hindu and many other Eastern philosophies human remains are not as taboo as they are in the West it's believed the soul leaves the body at death and all that's left is an empty vessel and so three decades after the ban was imposed Indian merchants continue to supply medical schools with specimens certainly domestically but possibly around the world the workforce might now be a skeleton crew compared to the full-bodied glory days but the trade in human bones continues I knew him Horatio a fellow of Infinite Jest of most excellent fancy yes borne me on his back a thousand times and now how abhorred in my imagination it is what about you can you buy a real human skull a Yorick to your Hamlet well in most countries yes the buying and owning of human remains remains legal in many countries including the u.s. the UK India but not Australia now there are plenty of vendors online although I will tell you now they're not cheap or I would have even considered trying to buy something for this video you'll have to contact them directly because eBay banned the sale of human remains in 2016 an alternative would be to raid a cemetery although that would of course be a grave mistake because that is illegal however once bones out of the ground short of expensive DNA testing there's a very little way to prove or disprove whence they came talking of Indian skulls some of you will have no doubt noted this picture behind me this was a man from my village in India from whom I learned yoga meditation and a strict code of non-violence as well as how to kill people using my fists and fire these three skulls were people in our village that died from a terrible plague their bodies snatched from us by shadaloo to be sold to British medical schools that galvanized him I think his name was Dave to fight evil and made me want to become a doctor most Hindus and Buddhists are cremated so relics human remains like bones are not common features unlike in Christianity for example however certain sects like the UH quarry exist who utilize skulls for ritualistic purposes giving rise to the Indiana Jones character from whom Dhalsim draws inspiration mola Ram played by the late great unrest Puri and as you can see here he was a cardiologist twelve dollars you couldn't get dick for $12 because he cost considerably more than that and to be honest he's taught me nothing but for just 12 bucks you can expand your mind now that you've heard about the quarry who make cups from skulls why not check out the Enigma man on a curiosity stream have you ever heard of the Red Deer cave people I have either a skull cup found in China revealed an entirely new sophisticated subspecies of human giraffes de stream have thousands of high-quality documentaries on history science technology and loads more and not only have they supported me for lots of videos for a year now they really have looked after me but they're offering you a completely free subscription to nebula where I think you'll find something you will like maybe there is the place where we can make the videos that we want to without worrying about YouTube's algorithm ax owning us and you can watch nebula originals like Tom Scott's money featuring the sexy the suave sophisticated supercilious this scottish and the sam so to enjoy not only everything curiosity stream has to offer as well as access to all these educational creators playground of new ideas sign up at the link below and use the promo code med life don't forget to use that code so I can get paid mother I get a year for only 12 bucks much less than you would pay for dick now true facts at medical school after dissection people used to feel really hungry I don't know why but it was very common and all this talk of bones has gotten me rather peckish as well anybody for spare ribs

Channel: Medlife Crisis

Views: 265,552

Keywords: Medlife Crisis, Medicine, Science, Education, Comedy, Doctor, Cardiology, Medical School, Anatomy, History of medicine, India, Kolkata, Organ trafficking, Human body, Biology, Medical students, Dissection, Macabre

Id: QcudPWsyxzk

Length: 18min 3sec (1083 seconds)

Published: Mon May 11 2020