Comment on ‘It’s gruesome’: fears of grave-robbing amid rise in sale of human remains

Korhaka@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• scratchee@feddit.uk ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Stealing human remains is illegal, but selling (correctly sourced) human remains is legal.

  I think their point is that it’s very hard to prove bones are illegally sourced, meaning they can only prosecute if they’re able to prove the bones were sourced illegally.

  If instead it was always illegal to sell human remains (presumably with exceptions for medical/educational purposes), that might make policing them somewhat easier.

  An alternate strategy might be to require strict tracking for human remains - you can sell a skull but it must have a certificate listing the full chain back to its original owner (presumably deceased). Failure to retain that chain of custody gets you in legal hot water regardless of how you obtained it. Possibly with a little extra security to prevent duplicate use of legitimate certification. (eg each sale is logged with a trusted 3rd party so you can’t keep claiming that every skull you sell is the same guy until one of them gets inspected, forcing you to find a new legitimate doner to act as cover).

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