A hospital in North Carolina tells the story of sending letters to its patients – 16 of them – who received bone implants that had come from “illegal sources” over the past three years. Stolen from bone banks? Robbed from another hospital? Purchased on eBay? No, stolen from funeral homes. Lovely.
And our David Magnus makes the really disgusting point: “It would be an awful shame if, in addition to the utter contempt and disrespect shown to the deceased, the patients at the receiving end become very sick, said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics.”
But if you are worried about what’s in your bones, afraid that you are infected by another, touched without permission … don’t go to Brown University to look up answers about body parts or how to think about death. See, the anatomy book there – and if you get really ambitious, the 19th century edition of Dance of Death, are literally bound in human skin.
[thanks Art Caplan]