Row erupts over export of corpses

[T_i_B]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1088924,00.html

A Kyrgyzstan MP has caused outrage by alleging that the country's prisons and hospitals illegally sold off vast numbers of corpses and body parts which ended up as museum exhibits in Europe.
The corpses were sold without the consent of relatives to Kyrgyzstan's medical academy which passed them on to the German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, Akbokon Tashtanbekov said.

Von Hagens, whose Body Worlds exhibition of flayed human bodies had a long run in London, appeared before parliament in the central Asian state last month to deny breaking any laws or using Kyrgyz bodies in his exhibitions.

The allegations have prompted a police investigation into the medical academy and stirred passions in the largely Muslim state.

"He is a professional liar," Von Hagens told the hearing. He said he had worked on corpses from Kyrgyzstan but had returned them for use by students. He said he had plenty of voluntary donors to supply his exhibitions.

[cosmicaug]

1. Wallpaper

I've been using one of the pictures from those exhibits as my Windows desktop's wallpaper for quite a while now. It never ocurred to me that the pictured bodies might have been illegally obtained. It must be noted that there's a long tradition of illegal procurement of bodies for medical students --the worst recent case involving a South American country (Colombia?) where actual murder (I don't remember the details) was involved.

[R Hickey]

2. During the digging of the Panama Canal so many workers died...

So many workers died of malaria and yellow fever during the French attempt to dig the Panama Canal (1880's) that people found it cheapest to pickel the bodies and send them in barrels to Europe for use in anotomy classes in medical schools.

[T_i_B]

4. Bodysnatching used to be quite common in Europe

Here is an example, it is the infamous Burke and Hare, who did not stop at those already dead.

http://www.highlanderweb.co.uk/burkhare.htm

Ever aware of a market to meet, Burke and Hare set themselves up as procurers of human bodies to satisfy the demand of Edinburgh's medical schools.

Originally the two would dig up the graves of the recently departed in the dead of night, steal the body and then sell it for cash to a doctor for use during anatomy demonstrations. Sounds like hard work and Burke and Hare must have thought so, too, because they decided there was no need to go digging. The two entrepreneurs started murdering people in Edinburghs old town and selling the cadavers of the victims to the medical schools on an 'ask no questions basis.'

[Cronus Protagonist]

3. The Grateful Dead

The ones that he accepted, that is....

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