Body parts industry booming in U.S. where entire bodies can sell for $11,000

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Forget body shots. Body parts are where it’s at – at least in the United States.

Following the arrests of six people charged with buying and selling human body parts stolen from a Harvard morgue comes a report that this is more common than most people can stomach.

It’s a macabre market, where body parts donated for science are sold by a body broker to sell to other interested parties to do whatever they want with, according to the New York Post.

Harvard Medical School morgue manager Cedric Lodge, 55, allegedly stole body parts that were donated for research and intended for eventual cremation.

Lodge’s wife is also accused of being in on the alleged scheme and was busted, along with an Arkansas mortuary employee who allegedly sold body parts on Facebook for nearly $11,000 and a Massachusetts store owner who allegedly bought a human skull to create a creepy doll.

While organ and tissue donations are “heavily regulated” by the federal government, whole bodies are not, and can sell from about $5,000 to as much as $11,000, the paper reported.

Human heads can fetch as much as $3,000, a spine can sell for about $1,200 and a set of hands will cost about $1,000, depending on the condition of the appendage.

“And when I say head, I don’t mean skull,” Jon Milton, director at Laurel Hill Funeral Home and Memorial Park in Virginia, told the Post. “So, you still have the tissue, the brain, the face.”

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Thomas Champney, who teaches cell biology and anatomy at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, added that body brokers typically sell to surgical-training programs for teaching purposes, the incident at Harvard appear to be “more nefarious.”

“And that is, individuals who want to gain human tissues for uses that really aren’t appropriate,” he described. “For instance, they were selling skin to get it tanned into leather so they could make human skin-leather products. That’s just not appropriate.”

Milton, who is calling for federal supervision, given the lack of accountability in the whole-body donation process, wasn’t surprised by the Harvard incident.

“In Virginia, there’s only one legal, authorized donation service, but over 80% of anatomical donations leave the state — and there’s no licensing requirements regarding facilities or people who begin a body brokerage at all,” he added.

“So you have a lot of people who can just operate without any oversight, and that’s where we get into circumstances like at Harvard.”