11 - Material Entanglements of the Corpse

Summary

Introduction

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published an incendiary report in 2012 on a thriving global market for cadaveric human tissue. The transnational conglomerate of journalists tracked across 11 countries how ‘donated’ corpses are obtained in Ukraine, processed into biomedical products in Germany and then distributed in the United States for a consumer market spread across the world. In mapping the journey of the corpse and its parts from Eastern Europe to North America, the ICIJ revealed how a variety of commonly used medical treatments involve the recycling of cadaveric tissue. From cruciate ligament reconstructions to penis enlargements, heart valve replacements to orthopaedic surgery, and skin transplants, bone grafts and bladder slings, the dead body materializes as a lucrative vessel for the harvesting of skin, flesh and bone.

This ‘shadowy market’ in the supply and demand of cadaveric tissue resembles the practice in the 18th and 19th centuries of trafficking indigenous peoples’ remains in the United Kingdom, and African American cadavers in the United States (Richardson, 2001; Sappol, 2004). The most notorious ‘body brokers’ in the colonial market for human cadavers were the ‘resurrectionists’, who until the enactment of the Anatomy Act 1832 (UK), resorted to any means available, including grave robbing and even murder, to procure specimens for medical schools. The Anatomy Act legalized the trade of cadaveric tissue only in the situation where a person had lawful possession of a corpse. In other words, where a corpse remained unclaimed by the next-of-kin, a person could lawfully supply it to medical schools in exchange for a fee, which was ostensibly exploited by workhouses, prisons, hospitals, morgues and funeral houses to sell the cadavers of mostly paupers, prisoners and indigenous people.

Modern ‘body brokers’ still operate today around the world to supply ‘donated’ corpses not only to medical schools, but also profit-making companies, which then sell or lease body parts to research institutes, pharmaceutical corporations, and medical training companies. What has changed however, since at least the 1980s, is that the global market for cadaveric tissue has diversified into different revenue streams (Gow and Shiffman, 2017).