(NSFW) Skin and Bones Commodified

Everything around us is being commodified, from the natural world to virtual worlds and from our personal information to our physical bodies.

I’ve been writing about the dark and disturbing world of organ harvesting, not because of some morbid fascination but from where the open source investigation concerning the Clinton Cartel, and in examining the Pedogate phenomenon, have lead me.

I came across this video while looking in to human organ harvesting and I find it touches upon many of the themes that have been uncovered in the investigative efforts of citizen journalists such as the George Webb – DynCorp Harvest – series.

This short documentary was produced by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in conjunction with the 2012 book:

Skin and Bones: The Shadowy Trade in Human Body Parts

https://www.icij.org/tissue/about-project-skin-and-bone

The content of the video is not overly graphic but I thought it would be best to give warning to sensitive viewers.

(Warning: Graphic)

“Human beings don’t do such things, taking advantage of our tragedy.”

“They make money off our misfortune”

- Malish Family (Ukraine) - ‘Donor’ family

The video raises a number of uncomfortable issues surrounding the trade in human organs and, essentially, the recycling of corpses.

Body and organ ‘recovery’ consists of more than just the vital organs it also encompasses: Bones, tendons, muscles, skin, veins, heart valves, research tissues, blood tissue, just about everything.

The ICIJ website:

ICIJ found the business of recycling dead humans has grown so large over the past decade that you can buy stock in publicly traded companies that rely on corpses for their raw materials.
Skin and bones donated by relatives of the dead are turned into everything from bladder slings to surgical screws to material used in dentistry or plastic surgery.
Distributors of the merchandise can be found in much of the world. Some are subsidiaries of billion-dollar multinational medical corporations.
ICIJ discovered that patients aren’t always told that the product they are getting originated from a corpse. This led to a more complex issue – how does the industry source the raw material it uses in its products?

We know from previous research that body parts come from two sources:

1. Deceased Donors
2. Living Donors (traditional definition excludes: essential organs – ex. Kidney)

Deceased Donors

• Consent/ permission from the deceased prior to death or from the family of the deceased
• Chinese Prisoners (bodies are harvested after executions)
o Especially political prisoners such as the Falun Gong people
• Bodies / Cadavers from conflict zones (Syria, Iraq, Kosovo, etc.)
• Bodies / Cadavers clandestinely harvested from mortuaries and funeral homes

Living Donors

• Consent given by donor- Paid or unpaid
• ‘Consent’ obtained through coercion or torture (Chinese Prisoners)
• Human trafficking (Slave labor: mining sweatshops, sex slave castaways, donor matches for waiting recipients)
• Indebted people (See George Webb Micro-lending & Digicel in Haiti)

The Profit Motive

Profits for:
• Medical related companies/corporations
• Providers of organs for transplantation
• Providers of human tissue, blood, various body parts
• Brokers (Organ procurement facilitators)
• Human traffickers (may compound profits after slave labor, sex slavery, drug smuggling)
• State Institutions (Prisons: China organ harvesting).

Supply and Demand

The rapidly increasing demand for human body parts and tissues is also a major contributing factor.

Illegal harvesting of human body parts and tissues is fuelled by the increasing demand in the market place. More and more, those looking to make a profit off the lucrative black market are turning to human trafficking as an answer for the shortage in supply. In some instances, such as human kidney transplants the organ can reach a sales price of nearly $200,000 USD.

Living donors provide several advantages over deceased donors. The organs of living donors (trafficked human beings) compared to those of deceased donors, can be kept in optimal condition while a schedule for an organ transplant is decided upon. The organ recipient can schedule the procedure at a time of his or her choosing. The compatibility of the potential organs can also be more thoroughly studied and monitored right up until the operation.

Origin of Organs

One of the major problems in the trade of human tissue is in knowing where the human body parts originate from and where they finally end up. It appears that there is no way of knowing how the body parts are obtained. There’s also the serious issue of contamination or diseased tissue. Since doctors are not always required to fully inform patients about the origins or nature of tissues used in certain procedures it is highly unlikely that the patient will have a full account of any related complications or infections.

The ICIJ investigation major findings are:

Consent: There have been repeated allegations in Ukraine that human tissue was removed from the dead without proper consent. Some of that tissue may have reached other countries, via Germany, and may now be implanted in hospital patients.
Safety: Surgeons are not always required to tell patients they are receiving products made of human tissue, making it less likely a patient would associate subsequent infection with that product.
Tracking: The U.S. is the world's biggest trader of products from human tissue, but authorities there don’t seem to know how much tissue is imported, where it comes from, or where it subsequently goes.

Note: Strangely enough Palantir software was donated to provide assistance to the ICIJ investigation.

As previously discussed, the video (top of page) and the case of Chinese prisoners highlight the problem with consent. In the case of the Chinese prisoners, ‘consent’ to give the State permission to harvest an inmate’s organs may be obtained under duress. The prisoner may be subjected to threats to their family members and may be subjected to torture themselves. It is also very likely that a prisoner may not understand what they are ‘consenting’ to or may not fully comprehend what exactly is entailed in organ procurement.

As the video graphically demonstrates, getting the most out of a cadaver, is likely to results in higher profits. However, it also can result in the partial or complete mutilation of the deceased.

This is not what most families have in mind when they give permission to ‘recover’ parts of their deceased loved ones. Most people probably imagine the donation of a kidney or perhaps a skin graft, not the stripping of the body as if it were a used car at the scrap yard.

Personal Note:

In my opinion, this relates to the commodification of everything in society and the extreme, and perverse, end of unfettered capitalism. Let me give a brief analogy.

When I visited Ground Zero (World Trade Center) in New York in 2004. My friends and I were shocked to find that the area was completely surrounded by vendors selling, basically 9-11 memorabilia. I had to physically restrain a friend of mine who had become enraged by a calendar featuring the NYFD. He had asked the vendor how much of the proceeds went to the families of the firefighters and the vendor smiled and made up a number on the spot. The entire arrangement of sidewalk tables full of merchandise was opportunistic, undignified, shameful and disgusting. For my friend, this amounted to making a profit off human tragedy and misery. There were even several laptops connected to a generator that displayed a looping video of the planes crashing into the towers while an emotional Enya-esque song droned on in the background. A speech by George W. Bush also faded in and out on the screen.

The only reason I mention this story here is because I feel that it captures the dark side of capitalism, where everything and anything is commodified and for sale. Nothing is sacred.

I’m thinking here of the notion of the commercialization of things that are not commercial in essence. Corporations have successfully commodified basic human needs, such as water, while others collect your personal history, friendships and preferences selling off parts of your identity as data.

Of course, the human body has long been commodified, the long history of slavery and prostitution demonstrated this. Yet, the harvesting of the human body, the dissection, dismemberment and deconstruction for financial gain seems particularly grotesque.

Like slavery it reduces the individual to a subhuman level or some kind of a walking blood bank or assortment of spare parts. There is a gaping hole of inhumanity behind this practice or any recognition of the human spirit that lives in all of us.

Human beings are being sold into a life of bondage, their bodies used for labor in sweatshops and mines, women and men being forced into sex slavery and when they’re services are no longer needed, they’re exterminated, and finally their bodies are looted and plundered. Every last dollar is squeezed out of their working bodies, all the way down to the last drop of blood and even to skin and bones.

Looking into the Darkness

This is a very dark subject and a difficult one to ponder. I imagine some people stopped reading halfway through, and I don’t blame them. Yet, I for one cannot in good conscious turn a blind eye and ignore what is going on here.

“Sunshine is the best antidote to darkness.”

I’m paraphrasing George Webb here and I have to agree with this statement. If we’re ever going to change the situation, we must drag it into the light of day.

When tissue banks and medical industry players are making profits on the proceeds made from the sale of human body parts it incentivizes these companies to extract the maximum they can from each body. In this way, they become medical scavengers, patiently waiting for an opportunity to move in and exploit the situation to the fullest. Making money off Misery.

Once a human body has been completely commodified, a person’s intrinsic value as a living breathing being is replaced by the market value of its consisting parts, the net worth of the body’s blood, skin and bones.