Timesuck with Dan Cummins - Short Suck #9 - The US Human Body Trade

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

What happens to your body when it is donated to science? Does it actually end up in front of some doctor or medical student? Not necessarily. Sometimes it ends up being sold by nefarious body brokers to be used for explosive detonation testing or to add to the collection of some weirdo who just likes dead bodies. What happens to corpses in the US is not nearly as regulated as you probably think. Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_Wem61jufrQFor Merch and everything else Bad Magic related, head to: https://www.badmagicproductions.com

Welcome to this edition of Time Suck Short Sucks. I'm Dan Cummins and today I'll be sharing the fascinating and disturbing story of the US human body trade. We'll be exploring what happens to bodies that are donated to science and answer some questions along the way like are the bodies that are donated to science always used for the advancement of the medical field and the education of our nation's future doctors, nurses, and surgeons? Uh, no. Are they at least always handled with dignity and respect, stored appropriately, at least

dissected using proper medical equipment? God no, absolutely not. Are the organizations responsible for getting donated bodies to scientific institutions at least qualified to do so? Oh no, not even a little bit. In fact, almost anyone can become a body broker. Looking for a new side hustle? Maybe this week's mini-sode will spark a career switch.

Almost anyone can purchase a dead body. And the best part is, all of this is 100% legal. Words and ideas can change the world. I hated her, but I wanted to love my mother. I have a dream. I plead not guilty right now. Your only chance is to leave with us. How much do you think you're worth? And I'm not talking about a metaphorical measure of personhood, you know, like how kind or virtuous or loving you are, but rather an objective monetary value. As a physical being, how much do you think your body would go for if you put on the market? And to be clear, your dead body.

Your thoughtless, talentless sack of meat. Couple bucks? Couple hundred? Couple thousand? Or maybe you're so cocky to think that your meat sack shell could sell for a million dollars or more. Or maybe you're so cocky to think that your meat sack shell could sell for a million dollars or more. Or perhaps you strongly object to the quantification and reduction of the human body into a for-sale commodity and think that you are innately priceless and can't be bought. Well, you'd be wrong my friend. You for sure can be bought and you can be sold. You can even be rented.

You can even be sold to multiple buyers at the same time. You don't need to be sold whole. In fact, it's more profitable to have yourself chopped up into itty bitty pieces that can each be sold separately. So don't be so fucking selfish. Let your next of kin chop your shit up, make some coin. It's not like you need your body anymore. Come on, help somebody out. In the current market, market on average your hands are

worth $250 each your head 500 bucks your brain 750 bucks your foot 200 your knee randomly 450 apparently knees are hot items and your leg if your butcher is skilled enough to keep the hip attached $1,. Got that fucking priceless knee in the middle. And if you're thinking, I get that the going rate for a head is $500, but my gigachad square chiseled jaw, been skullmogging Melvins my whole life head, it's gotta be worth a few grand at least.

Uh, no. The quality or attractiveness of the head doesn't seem to factor much into the marketplace. Although if you have an exceptionally handsome head, I'm sure, you know, whoever your body ends up with could find a specialty buyer who might want to use it for, you know, less than scientific purposes, if they can get your head quick, you know, before your face starts to rot off and shuff. But seriously, I think I just said shuff. I was going to say shit

and then change my mind to stuff and it came out shuff It's a new word put in the dictionary But seriously if you're dismembered just right your parts could make someone up to ten thousand dollars Whereas if you're kept in one piece your price tag is half that and these aren't black market prices Where your body whole or in parts is sold to some wealthy cannibals or cult members or some freaky fuck with a necrophilia kink who would rather not kill anyone to gain access to their cold holes. No, this is all part of the completely legal, multimillion dollar industry of the US human body trade

where each year tens of thousands of corpses are willingly donated to businesses that promise to use them for the advancement of science and education in the United States, which is often not true. Bodies that are donated to science do occasionally end up in legitimate institutions like universities or medical research centers, but it's definitely not guaranteed. Or I should say, even when it is guaranteed, it doesn't always happen. The truth is there are currently no federal laws in place that govern the sale and purchasing of cadavers and human body parts in the US and because of

this according to one source almost anyone can dissect and sell the dead. There is one federal law regarding cadaver supply. It was passed a few years back now, 1790, and it gives federal judges the right to add dissection to the sentence of death for murder and And not only does this court sentence you to be hanged until dead at the end of a rope Your sentence will not be completed at the moment of your demise. No, sir You will also be poked with needles and sliced and diced by young men pursuing a career in the medical arts Or at least considering a career in the medical arts, or at least considering a career in the medical arts, or at the very least somewhat curious regarding what your insides look like.

Take him away. In most states, the only real policy enforced is that businesses or individual persons can only sell or purchase consensually donated dead bodies to other institutions or individual persons who will use the body for educational purposes, or at least promise to. However, educational purposes not very clearly defined. I could have bought a body to slice and dice up to give me additional stuff to talk about in this episode, but I didn't because that honestly freaks me out. And I think if we if I were seeing dragging a corpse down the hall here in the office building it would possibly get me kicked out. Nothing

to see here don't worry about it. Doing a little extra research this week. It would definitely get me kicked out of the building if I yelled that while dragging the body down the hall by its cock and balls. Which is also not illegal as long as I'm not dragging it by its cockleballs in order to get off sexually. However, there are a few states like New Mexico where I could legally drag a dead body down the hall while holding his cockleballs while also jerking off its dick, which I realized would be quite the feat of agility. As of January 2024, New Mexico is one of five US states without a law against necrophilia. Looks like I might get one on the books though this year. The other four states are Illinois, Kansas,

Louisiana, and Vermont. And there are maybe two others. The legality of sex with dead people in Kansas and Louisiana. Little murky. Until a few years ago you could also legally have sex with the dead body of Wisconsin. The stories that are out there on the internet. Following case led legislators to make it illegal. Yeah, these guys ruined it for everybody else. 2006, three men dug up a young woman's freshly buried body. 20-year-old Laura Tennyson,

who had died in a motorcycle crash, to have sex with her body after seeing her obituary picture in the paper. Seriously. They thought they were fucking trolling the obituary like it was a dating app. And they swiped right on her obituary picture. Twins Nicholas and Alexander Grunk or Grunky. Let's say Grunky. That's funnier to say. 20 of Ridgway and Dustin Radke, 20 of Mineral Point, were caught in the act of digging her up and quickly confessed as to why they were digging her up and were charged with attempted sexual assault.

My God, all three of them. Who was going third in that crew? Who is so desperate for sex that they will fuck a corpse after their two friends have just had a turn? After their brother and some friend has taken a turn. Grant County Circuit Judge George Curry dismissed the sexual assault charges because Laura was dead. And Wisconsin had no law in the book

specifically prohibiting sex with the corpse at that time. They were charged with some misdemeanors related to grave robbing. And by 2008, Wisconsin had a necrophilia law in the books. No more of that. So while you can't legally fuck a dead body almost anywhere anymore, like you could back in the good old days,

you can still sell them. In almost every single state, you don't even need a training, any kind of training or a license to legally sell or buy the dead. That means when you donate your body to science, although your arm might end up at a lab at John Hopkins University, your torso might end up at

some display at a roadside museum in Philadelphia, your brain might get dissected in front of a pain audience at the Marriott Hotel in Las Vegas, or your head might get sewn on to another person's body and sold to the military for some blast testing. And just so we're clear, I know I make a lot of ludicrous jokes on this show that might have sounded like one of them, but those were all very real examples of some of the places bodies that have been donated to science have been sold to instead. And to reiterate, all done legally.

So how popular is donating your body to science compared to more traditional methods of disposal like cremation or burial? Well, currently in the US cremation is the most popular method of dead body disposal. However, this was not always the case. In 1970, only 5% of dead Americans were cremated. By 2020, that number had skyrocketed to 56%. The National Funeral Directors Association predicts that by 2035, nearly 85% of Americans will opt to have their lifeless corpses incinerated

rather than be embalmed and buried in a casket. Currently, less than 1% of Americans are opting to have their body preserved in formaldehyde and then reanimated after being turned into an animatronic figure like you'd see at Disneyland or Chuck E. Cheese and then rented out to entertain kids at birthday parties. What a shame. What an unimaginative country I live in. Also, I can't find any Americans opting to have a couple helium-filled get-well-soon balloons tied to their wrists at open casket funerals to make it a little more fun. Come on, people! Funeral starts with letter F, just like fun does.

Aside from the dirt or the flame, there are other options out there, though, for where you want your meat sack to go once your soul, if you've got one, has departed. Nowadays, science and human ingenuity has led to dozens of body disposal options entering the market every year. For the environmentally conscious dead out there, you can even have your body literally turned into water through a process called aquamation, though it's currently only legal in 20 states, or you can be buried in a specially made biodegradable mushroom suit. Yeah, you heard me right, mushroom suit. You can be buried in a mushroom suit. Although it sounds like a character

customization option for some new Mario Brothers game, the mushroom suit is actually incredibly good for the environment. Before a standard burial, the body is involved using a variety of chemicals. When it is actually buried, those same toxins are released into the soil and in great numbers can cause substantial harm to local wildlife and plant life. But in a mushroom suit, the body is allowed to decompose naturally as the spores consume all of the dead human tissue, negating any need for embalming and thus preventing any further toxins from seeping into the earth. And it only costs around $1500, which is less than a standard burial suit.

And you can even get mushroom suits for pets for about $200. And if psychedelic mushrooms become legalized, I'm guessing you can be buried in a shroom suit. And then your friends and family could literally get high off of your supply. How cool would it be to have psychedelic shrooms growing out of your corpse? If given the choice, would you trip off of your dad's shrooms? I think I would. I imagine that would be a very intense trip. Nowadays, in addition to water or mushroom buffet, you can also have your

body turned into dirt, a giant tree seed, also known as a burial pod, a diamond, a vinyl record, some coral reef, and more. So much more. There are even butt plug urns out there. On Etsy you can find stainless steel butt plug urns. In 2022 a 23 year old Australian law student Sarah Button was caught passing through airport security with her dead boyfriend's ashes hidden in a butt plug that was hidden in her butt She was about to board a flight to the to the United Arab Emirates

Emirates? Oh man, I think it's Emirates While wearing a butt plug in her late lover's favorite place, she said while security officials raised alarms She said they took me and my friend aside without much explanation, adding she was forced to call her dad to get help from the Australian embassy. What a fun phone call that was. I'm sorry, Sarah, you're in trouble for doing what? She was eventually let go that same day. It's unclear if she was allowed to fly with her dead boyfriend up her ass.

She would tell the New York Post, I like that I can take him with me to places we only ever dreamed of going. I'm not sure if she is still single but, hail, it's Athena! She's super cute and she seems very fun and really loyal. Some say romance is dead and there are still more options. If you so desire these days you can even have your ashes sent into space aboard a rocket. You can have them deposit on the days you can even have your ashes sent into space aboard a rocket. You can have them deposited on the moon. You can have your entire body frozen in liquid nitrogen. Or if you don't have the extra $10,000 it costs to launch your remains into space or Captain America yourself,

you can go another popular route. You can donate your body to science. Every year, approximately 20,000 Americans donate their bodies to science in hopes of contributing to the advancement of medical research and education. However, what many, if not most, are actually doing is unwittingly contributing their flesh and bones and brain and organs to an unregulated and extremely profitable system of commerce. Again, there are no federal laws in place that govern the sale and purchasing of cadavers and human body parts. And with no laws in place, that means that the consequences from mis-handling body parts

or selling them to disreputable buyers are very minimal. Furthermore, the human body trade businesses that operate unethically, which appears to be most of them, are oftentimes difficult to identify. This is because they advertise and present themselves as legitimate scientific organizations with altruistic goals Businesses that sell cadavers and human remains to willing buyers all have names that at first glance evoke a sense of professionalism and empathy names like the Arizona Biological Research Center MedCure and

Restore Life USA which are all real companies that have been exposed as being fraudulent In general these companies refer to been exposed as being fraudulent. In general, these companies refer to their industry as that of non-transplant tissue banks. No matter what they call themselves, what they really are is body brokers. In addition to carefully curating and misleading facades, fraudulent or immoral body brokers can also be difficult to identify because legally they don't have to identify themselves. Not only is there no national registry of body brokers but because of the lack of governance and regulation almost anyone can quietly become one and buy and sell body parts in almost complete anonymity. One expert on the subject was quoted in Reuters in a Reuters article saying, we know very

little about who is acquiring these bodies and what they are doing with them. That's disturbing. Recently, a slew of body brokers have been exposed from his handling corpses and corpse parts and selling them to entirely illegitimate and unethical sources without the consent of the deceased or the people in charge of their death arrangements. One of the most shocking and disturbing of these was the Arizona Biological Resource Center, which was raided by the FBI in 2014. What investigators found inside the reputable organization's warehouse was so graphic and grotesque

that after seeing it, multiple agents required trauma therapy. Just a few of the many horrors found inside the Arizona Biological Resource Center were trash cans full of unlabeled heads, a cooler full of dicks, literally just a cooler full of dicks, and a torso with a different head sewn onto it. Sounds like the set for the next Saw movie. Or, you know, the set for a really dark porno called cooler full of penises or something. Cooler full of cock! Cock cooler! I'll share more details about this Arizona facility soon But first let's go over the basics of the human body trade in the US how it works how much it costs who donates who sells?

and who profits And actually before all that let's back up and go over why there's a market for human bodies and body parts in the first place first and foremost Many argue that cadavers are absolutely necessary to research and education of medicine. Dating all the way back to the 15th century, cadavers have been used to study the intricacies of the human body as well as the best ways to treat it. And I'm sure it probably goes back in, you know, different cultures even before that. Also around the 15th century, cadaver dissection became popular amongst artists who helped them paint and sculpt human subjects.

Most notably, former Time Suckex subject Leonardo da Vinci, participated in multiple dissections of humans, as well as animals like horses, oxen, bears, and birds. Da Vinci wanted to discover how the nerves, tendons, muscles, and vessels functioned practically, how various body parts worked together to express emotions, physical motion, and more. After the Renaissance, corpse dissection fell out of fashion amongst artists,

but amongst the fields of science and medicine, cadavers still proved to be an invaluable tool. But then, during the late 16th century in the UK, freshly dead bodies became difficult to obtain. This was because of the Murder Act of 1772. That stated, and actually I'm sorry, it was then during the late 18th century, there was six there instead of eight, this was yeah, because was then during the late 18th century. Put a six there instead of an eight. This was, yeah, because during the Murder Act of 1772, that stated that not only the bodies of, excuse me, that stated that only the bodies of executed murderers

could now be used for dissection. Unfortunately, for the thousands of medical students and researchers of the age, there were very few dead murderers to go around, and supply just couldn't meet demand. To solve this problem, many decided to source their corpses elsewhere from cemeteries and cue an explosion of the cottage industry of grave robbing now.

Grave robbing became an epidemic in London and remained that way for half a century until 1832, when a new bill was passed that permitted those practicing the study of anatomy to obtain corpses from hospitals, prisons, and workhouses as long as there were no living relatives to object. After that, cadaver dissection once again skyrocketed, and so did our understanding of anatomy along with it. The dissection of human bodies was very common in U.S. universities for around two centuries

until 1980, when widespread debate about the ethics of the practice and the invention of the computer led to a 50% decrease in cadavers' classroom usage. However, they still remain an important aspect of both research and medical training. Today, med students dissect cadavers in order to understand the physical effects of different injuries, diseases, and mental disorders. According to one source, working with a cadaver is beneficial to students not only because it helps them comprehend the gravity of their work, better than words in a textbook, but because it, quote, inspires empathy and respect for human life.

In addition to simply supplying, or excuse me, in addition to simply studying cadavers, and maybe also pushing on boobs and wieners while making noises like be do be do and oh God med students also practice performing surgeries and other invasive procedures on the corpses multiple sources emphasize the importance of this because without cadavers living patients would end up being the guinea pigs for new surgeons even if they practice on 3d models of bodies most people in the field agree the artificial skin organs, and muscles cannot prepare you for working on a whole living, breathing person as much as working on a dead person can. So unless you want your abdomen to be the first that a newly graduated surgeon slices open in your guts to be the first he or she sees in real life, it's safe to say human bodies are necessary to the sciences and education. Corpse study is good for the medical field. Great actually. But what about the large

percentage of bodies that are donated to science that do not actually end up in university laboratories? That is where problems arise. And before I discuss those problems, time for today's mid-show sponsor break. If you don't want to hear these ads, you can sign up on patreon patreon become a space lizard for five dollars a month and get the entire catalog ad free and more. And I'm back. Now let's talk about what happens to the bodies that are donated to science that don't actually end up in university laboratories. A lot of those bodies end up dismembered and divided into buckets and warehouses and sold to people and organizations who have no intention of

using the raw materials for the advancement of science. From 2017 to 2018, Reuters published a fantastic investigative seven-part series on the ill-understood and shady business of what it means to donate your body to science. Also important to note that the human body trade is an entirely separate industry to organ donation, which is highly regulated by both federal and state laws. So good to know, you know, that you can get your new kidney from someone who chose to donate their organs before dying in a car crash, for example, as opposed to getting that kidney from somebody who got roofied at a party and later woke up in a bathtub full of ice.

According to part one of the Reuters series, the human body trade can be broken down into eight steps. The first step is solicitation. Body brokers target people that are dying or the families of those who have already died, both online and in person, at funeral homes, hospices, and hospitals, oftentimes in lower income neighborhoods. In some cases body brokers will partner with funeral homes to find corpses. Essentially how this twisted relationship works is morticians will encourage families that can't afford cremation or are otherwise uncertain about what to do with their loved ones remains to consider donating the body to a specific broker. In return the broker will pay the mortician a reference fee that can range from about 300 bucks to

about 1,500 bucks so pretty lucrative. According to Reuters, as of 2017, there were 62 funeral homes in the US that instruct deals with body brokers. All right, now back to how the brokers solicit people. The body brokers marketing scheme hinges on two main selling points. The promise of the dying person's sacrifice and death will contribute to scientific advancement,

thus saving the lives of thousands in the future. And that if they choose to donate their bodies, a portion of themselves will be cremated for free contribute to scientific advancement, thus saving the lives of thousands in the future, and that if they choose to donate their bodies, a portion of themselves will be cremated for free and given back to the family. More than contributing to science, the free partial cremation is a massive draw for many. This is because in the US, the average cost of a direct cremation without a funeral is three grand. The average cost of a full-service cremation with a funeral service is between five and seven grand and the average cost of a funeral with

a burial casket and headstone is about ten grand. In other words it is fucking expensive to die which is pretty weird since a shovel doesn't cost much at all and a lot of us have plenty of yard to dispose a body or twelve into. But seriously for many people the cost of corpse disposal is literally a financial impossibility. What a weird concept, right? To not be able to afford to bury your loved one. Dying and death, not just a financial hardship for those in the lowest socio-economic statuses either. Let's say someone just died of cancer, which has been the leading cause of death in America for 75 years

and is the cause for one in six deaths worldwide. It's likely that prior to their death they themselves or their families have had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills hundreds of thousands. Take chemotherapy for example. On average the cost of chemotherapy is somewhere between a thousand twelve hundred dollars a month. That means if someone is in chemo for just a year right they're paying upwards of forty eight thousand dollars. To put that in perspective, in 2022, the minimum income of an American household with a family of four to qualify as middle class

was around 50 grand, with the minimum income to qualify as upper middle class being 156 grand. Just one year's worth of chemotherapy is clearly generally beyond the average household's annual income. Going back to our example now, let's say an elderly mother of two middle-aged children

has just passed away from a three-year battle or after a three-year battle with cancer. Not only are her kids stuck paying off her medical bills, they're now faced with an emotionally taxing and financially burdensome decision. What do we do with mom's body? If the deceased person hasn't already decided on their preferred method of disposal and also left money to pay for it, for those they've left behind, the question of what to do with their corpse is overwhelming. And because time is money and bodies, after all, do start to decompose immediately after death,

it's a question they're forced to answer ASAP. But who can possibly decide on what to do with their mom's freshly deceased corpse when they're also dealing with all the little tasks required of death? Tasks like getting their mom's will in order. Cleaning all the medical supplies out of her room. Trying to keep her estranged sister from stealing her jewelry. Figuring out what to do with her diabetic and blind cat named Frank. Canceling her cable subscription.

Canceling her Better Homes and Gardens subscription. Figuring out what the fuck is going on with her life insurance policy. Figuring out what to do with her two-bedroom condo in the mountains that stuffed floor to ceiling with boxes, many of them containing years worth of issues of Better Homes and Gardens. Figuring out how to do with her two-bedroom condo in the mountains that stuffed floor to ceiling with boxes, many of them containing years worth of issues of better homes and gardens. Figuring out how to live life without her. Figuring out how to put Frank out of his misery without anybody finding out that you've killed him. You know? And so on and so forth. You get it. People in grief are vulnerable. They're often in a real tough spot and body brokers take advantage of this. Amidst all the pain and planning and decision-making when a body broker comes along

and offers to cremate a loved one for free and use their body for good. That can seem like a godsend to those in grief. Once the target has agreed to the exchange, the next step is for the dying person, or the next of kin of an already dead person, to sign a contract consenting to the donation. However, as one source points out, these agreements are often written in technical language that many donors and relatives say they find hard to understand. The documents give brokers the right to dismember the dead, then sell or rent body parts to medical researchers and educators, often for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Once consent has been given, the body will be delivered to the broker's warehouse, which nationwide generally resembles a meatpacking factory. I'll have examples soon. They'll be intense. There the broker will then assess the corpse's physical condition and medical history and test it for infectious diseases. After assessment, the next step is dissection. While some corpses are kept intact, most are dissected into six portions. Head, torso, left arm, right arm, left leg, right leg. Portion of the body, most often one of the hands is then removed and cremated and the ashes are sent back to the family. The rest of the body parts are added to the facility's

inventory. Sometimes in refrigerators, sometimes in boxes piled up in corners of hopefully refrigerated rooms or are packaged and sent off to whoever's buying. Because the prices of different body parts fluctuate daily based on demand, clients do not necessarily buy the desired corpse parts in one click of a button. Instead, they submit an order request to the broker who then surveys their inventory and sends back a quote. Ah, can't get you a dozen torsos this week Frank, sorry about that, but for the same price I can get you a half dozen torsos, another half dozen set of legs, four heads, and I'll

even throw in a pair of cockaballs. So do we have a deal? The client then either accepts the price or declines and keeps shopping around for a more affordable place to purchase 27 elbows or six adolescent spines or whatever the hell they're looking for. If they accept the price, the chopped up bits are shipped to the client straight away and then once they are no longer needed the client will cremate and dispose of the remains. Or I imagine just uh dump them off in a

private landfill or swamp or feed them to some hogs. What if we found out that a lot of America's biggest hog farms are feeding the pigs with dead people. They're just cheaper, you know, than buying other kinds of food. I want you to think about that the next time you bite into some bacon. I also want you to think about how even if that was definitely true, I would still eat that bacon because that's how fucking delicious bacon is. I could have kept that thought to myself, but I chose not to. Let's talk about rentals now. Like your favorite DVD of Blockbuster, clients can also opt to rent their human body parts

instead of outright buying them. In this case, after the rentals have outgrown their use, the client can simply ship them back to the broker for another happy customer to enjoy. All in all, the process, though macabre and disingenuous, sounds pretty simple. Get consent, get the body, assess the body, chop it up, package the parts, send them off or store them away. It's an easy process that yields a massive profit and has been adopted by dozens across America.

Yeah, dozens of companies. And the more popular the body broker business has become, the more horror stories have been revealed. Like this following one. In the fall of 2015, residents living near the warehouse of Southern Nevada Donor Services began complaining of a powerful and putrid stench emanating from the property, and all the bloody cardboard boxes continually left on the curb. After another complaint was issued about odd things happening in the body broker's courtyard,

which bordered the road, in December of that year, health inspectors visited the property. According to Reuters, when they arrived, the health inspectors found, quote, a man in medical scrubs holding a garden hose. He was thawing a frozen human torso in the midday sun. As the man sprayed the remains, bits of tissue and blood were washed into the gutters, a state health report said, the stream weaved past storefronts and pooled across the street near a technical school That'll see the promise

Just easily step over the small stream of blood and gore next to the sidewalk on your way to school or the sandwich shop Stop being a fucking baby and complaining about everything has America gotten so soft We can't even handle small streams of human blood and gore flowing through our neighborhoods. The torso the body brokers explained was being prepared for an urgent sale. Southern Nevada Dorner's services punishment for such a gross mistreatment of human remains and clearly not given a single shit about their neighbors was not much. A minor pollution citation was issued to the worker holding the hose. A fine which on average cost $300 in the state of Nevada. I'm sure they completely cleaned things up after that. And that story is not unique. Maltreatment of the dead and exploitation

of their families abounds in the body trade industry as it has been for doing or as it has been doing for over two decades now. In 2004 the director of UCLA's Willed Body Program, Henry Reed, was arrested for renting and selling donated bodies to corporate research entities outside of the university, one of whom was the pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson. And he'd later be sentenced to four years and four months in prison. On average, each year, the Willed Body Program at the university received around 175 donations from people who wanted their remains or the remains of their loved ones to be used to support students and their education

and do something positive for the future of medicine. Instead, many of them were sold for profit to corporations who use the bodies to test products on. On multiple occasions, Reed sold remains to a company where they were used for landmine experiments. One of the most prominent stories about the body broker industry to come out in the last decade was that of body broker Arthur Rathburn, who ended up being sentenced to nine years

in federal prison for selling diseased human remains to medical educators. But really, that wasn't even close to the most immoral thing he did. It just happened to be one of the few instances where there was an actual law in place prohibiting the gross shit he was doing. According to Reuters, from 1997 to 2013, Rathburn made $13 million dollars selling and renting the remains of people who had donated their bodies to science. Almost a million a year. Not only did he lease and sell diseased remains to institutions and claim they were disease

free when they weren't, he also stored the thousands and thousands of donated bodies in his vomit-inducing warehouse in Detroit called International Biological. He was arrested in 2013 after the FBI raided his house of horrors, but Rathburn's sordid story starts way before then. Authorities first became aware of Rathburn's shady ongoings in the mid-2000s. Then in 2010, they finally launched a full-fledged investigation after U.S. Customs agents discovered three human heads in Rathburn's car while he was re-entering the country from Ontario. Although the suspicious cargo wasn't technically illegal due to the business he was in, it did catch the FBI's attention. And then a year later, Rathburn was caught in, I kid you not, another situation involving border control and decapitated heads.

At the Detroit Metro Airport in February of 2012, agents intercepted an international shipment being transported from Israel to Rathburn by Delta Cargo. According to FBI documents, in addition to a statement signed by Rathburn that assured the contents were non-infectious, the agents found inside the shipment, a human head of an individual known to have died from bacterial sepsis and aspiration pneumonia The human head was packaged in a trash bag placed within a camping cooler Seven other human heads were also part of the shipment and packed in the same manner large quantities of liquid blood were found within the coolers That's cool. That's making me worry a little bit more about what's happening to my check luggage I used to just worry be lost or damaged from his handling.

Does it also sometimes end up getting stored next to a camping cooler with a diseased bloody head in it? Maybe. When Rathbun was questioned about the shipment by the Department of Homeland Security two weeks after the incident, this moron told them, among other things, that the heads found in the shipment had been embalmed, but they obviously hadn't. They were for sure raw. He also said that he had packaged the heads personally in Israel, but obviously he had

not. He had been in the US the entire time. And this is the best one. He claimed that the blood they found in the coolers was actually Listerine. It wasn't. It was for sure blood. They knew it was blood because they tested for blood and the results said it was blood. Also, why the fuck would you say Listerine?

Listerine looks and smells nothing like blood. It doesn't even have a blood-like consistency. Might as well have said it was apple juice or Pepto Bismol or bourbon. Why not say ketchup? Beet juice or something. All of these statements were found to be false and later Rathburn's attorney sent a statement to Border Patrol admitting that, The specimens were not embalmed, just soaked in 5% mouthwash and infused with water.

Okay, so that's what I said last time. Despite all this bullshit, no legal action was levied against Rathbun at this point. He didn't get into any trouble for that. Still, you might think that he, you know, eased up on renting out heads. He claimed to be disease-free to folks around the world. No, I mean, why would he? He didn't get in trouble. Less than eight months later, in December of 2012, Border Patrol at the Chicago O'Hare Airport intercepted a shipment from Italy. Take a guess what was inside. That's right,

human heads. So many. 18 this time. However, this time the entry documents for the shipment actually did include a heads up. No pun intended, but feel free to enjoy it about what was inside. According to the FBI, the entry documents read, exempt human specimen, 18 head slash neck, with a declared value of $18. That feels real low. 18 bucks? Is that the wholesale supplier's price for a head now? A buck a head? Even if it still has a neck on it? Also listed on the entry documents was the shipments intended recipient slash importer, a company called the Illinois Biological Resource Center, not Rathbun's company, International Biological.

But that wasn't quite true. The FBI quickly discovered through an email chain that the shipment was a joint effort between the Illinois Biological Resource Center, International Biological, and another body broker called the Arizona Biological Resource Center. Upon further investigation, the FBI also found that the documents the brokers had filed for mailing slash renting purposes were riddled with errors. The sex of the donor, age of the donor, the cause of death, the date of the death, just some of the things filed incorrectly by the brokers. In December of 2013, FBI agents finally raided Rathbun's warehouse in Detroit, which by the way had no heat, no running water, or

working bathrooms. I mean, why put in restrooms when you can just take a shit in someone's neck? I mean, they're already stink, they're already dead. What's the problem? In the warehouse, agents found such horrors as human remains and a worker's lunch just laid out on the same table. Oh boy, one refrigerator overflowing with quote, together flesh on flesh chunks. Jesus. And then another head stacked upright atop each other with no barrier in between. Just stacking heads in the fridge.

Anyone else kind of bummed this warehouse didn't make some extra money in the fall by opening up as a haunted house attraction? I mean if there aren't many laws around dead body use, is it illegal to use them in a haunted house display? I mean, that would be a good way to get some extra spooks. A real stack of haunted heads. That's gonna get some genuine screams. You're gonna get your money's worth. Agents also discovered that to dismember donated bodies, Rathbun and his employees were not using medical grade equipment, but chainsaws. As in the kind you just buy at a hardware store, cut down a tree with. Again, how did they not make money as a haunted attraction?

So many bodies and chainsaws. Add a big dude wearing a set of coveralls and a hockey mask and you're set. During his trial in 2016, Rathburn gave what Reuters described as a rambling statement in addition to maintaining that he never intentionally misled donors. By the way, my notes, I have to write the word misled with a hyphen in the middle so I don't say mausoleum. Because my brain wants to every single time no matter how many times I've gone over it. Yeah, he never intentionally misled donors and their families or the institutions that purchased body parts from him. He also

claimed that any uncleanliness in his lab was because of other people's laziness. At one point, he stated he was a visionary ahead of his time and told jurors, I know how some of you thought this was barbaric. I can understand your point of view, but this was necessary. I had to stack those heads in the fridge. Well, that's what I supposed to do. Only store how many heads I can store properly. Miss out on some head money. We had to use chainsaws. You have no idea how much longer

it takes to use proper surgical equipment. They're dead. What do they care? You know how many bodies complained about being chopped up with a chainsaw? Not a single one. In 2014, after discovering his ties with Arthur Rathburn, the FBI now raided the Arizona Biological Research Center. There, like at International Biological, agents uncovered the gruesome ways the prominent body brokers stored, dismembered, and sold donated bodies and body parts. This is crazy. In total, the FBI recovered 10 tons of unidentified human remains from warehouse. There was 155 total body parts including 281 heads, 337 legs, and 97 spines. 10 tons, 20,000 pounds. The contents filled 142 body

bags and just one of the bags had parts from 36 different people. Not only were the bodies kept in disrespectful and unethical ways, but former owner of BRC, Stephen Gore Oh, what a fucking perfect name by the way to be a body broker. Mr. Gore g-o-r-e He knowingly misled donors and their families Like we talked about earlier. It is common for body brokers to target low-income neighborhoods and BRC absolutely did this in the subsequent investigation into the company the FBI found that the absolutely did this. In the subsequent investigation into the company, the FBI found that the majority of donors were sourced from neighborhoods where the median income was well below the state average and that four out of five donors were high school dropouts. The company lured people in with the

usual promise of free cremation and that their body would be used for scientific development, scientific advancement, oftentimes telling them that their bodies would be used for research into the specific disease that they died from, you know, to help others avoid the same fate just really manipulative, really pulling on the heartstrings. That was the case with 74 year old Doris Stauffer who died of a multi-year long fight with Alzheimer's. After she died her son Jim was advised by a nurse to contact the nearby Biological Resource Center who told him that if he donated his mom's body, her remains could be used for research into Alzheimer's and Jim agreed. Within an hour, BRC workers arrived to collect Doris's body. Jim signed the paperwork, which he said was confusing

and strangely worded. He didn't understand much of it, but he did understand one thing. Unequivocally, Jim checked the box noting that as her next of kin, he did not consent to his mother's body being used for military, traffic safety, or non-medical experiments. However, BRC would sell his mother's remains to the Brazilian military who were testing out new urban bombs disguised as people skydiving. Surprise! Not a skydiver! It's grandma whose insides have been replaced with nitroglycerin and black gunpowder. Okay, that didn't happen, but that could work. But for real now, back at the BRC warehouse, one of Doris's hands was sawed off and cremated, and then 10 days later, Jim received his mom's remains. The rest of Doris was sold to the military, just not in Brazil.

Sold to the US Army for a taxpayer-funded research project testing the damage done to human bodies by roadside bombs. She was sold for $5,893, a little under six grand, to detonate Doris. So much for Alzheimer's research. Or you know what? Looked in the right way. Maybe this was Alzheimer's research.

Maybe it's important to understand how explodable somebody with Alzheimer's is versus somebody who doesn't have Alzheimer's. I don't know. Doris was one of 20 bodies that the Army had purchased from BRC in the last couple of years and when asked about their relationship with the body broker, they said they had never received any consent forms from BRC, but that they instead relied solely on the word of the body broker that the experiment had been consented to. Cool. In Doris's case, her body was sold minus her hand, of course, in its entirety.

However, Reuters found that most donors are dismembered and their parts sold separately as it is far more profitable. For example, one man named Conrad Patrick, who died at the age of 75, had donated his body to the BRC in hopes of aiding medical students in advancing medicine. Instead, he was cut up into seven pieces, which were then packaged and sold off to a variety of different buyers. His left foot was bought by a Chicago area orthopedic lab, his left shoulder sent to a Las Vegas company that holds surgical seminars, his head and spine bought by the US Army for

blast tests, his external reproductive organs, aka his cock and balls, sold to a private individual named Pat Sajak or sold to a local university, and his right foot and knee stored in a freezer for future purchase, for a future purchase. Some other examples of sales conducted by the BRC include the liver of a public school janitor being sold to a medical device company for six hundred and seven dollars, the torso of a bank manager being sold to a Swiss research institute for three thousand one hundred ninety one dollars, must have been a fucking hot torso, and the lower legs of a union activist sold to a Minnesota product development corporation for three hundred and fifty bucks each, that seems low. Must have been some little spindly

little eggs. Probably those organs belonged to those people. Who knows? Records keeping is not good here. The documents kept by the BRC were incredibly disorderly and unkept. And for both the FBI and investigative journalists, it was very difficult to trace the origins of the thousands of body parts found in the warehouse after the raid. Former FBI Phoenix FBI assistant special agents Mark Kweinar testified for the civil suit against PRC that when they raided the warehouse he said I observed a large torso with the head removed and replaced with a smaller head sewn together in a Frankenstein manner. Fuck. Buckets and coolers with various body parts, including a bucket of heads, arms, and legs.

How small is that head, I wonder? Are we talking Beetlejuice? After a head shrinker, you know, got to him small? Or just like a little bit smaller. Was he a huge dude? And then they sewed literally a baby's head onto his neck for a little workplace prank? Wish I had more details. Agent Kweiner also wrote that he saw male torsos that have been stripped of their penises, onto his neck for a little workplace prank. Wish I had more details. Agent Quiner also wrote that he saw male torsos that have been stripped of their penises, testicles, arms and legs, as well as a picnic type cooler filled with male genitalia. What a unique picnic that would be. What do you got there?

Sandwiches? Oh man, please tell me you packed sandwiches. I'm so hungry. No, no, no sandwiches, but if you're hungry enough, we do have plenty of meat to feast on After 2015 trial BRC owner Stephen Gore said that BRC had an incredibly kind professional and caring staff on all levels They fucking gently put those fucking cocks in that bin. It is my belief that we did what we could do fucking cocks in that bin. It is my belief that we did what we could do to honor the donor's consent as we understood it, especially the especially the head sewn onto another body. That's exactly what the person's family wanted. I'm saying that and then just bust out laughing. Then apologizing to the judge. Sorry, your honor. Oh shit, I know how fucked up this all is. I really do. I just, well, I never expected to get caught to be totally honest. No regrets though.

I mean, if you could have been there get caught, to be totally honest. No regrets, though. I mean, if you could have been there and seen the look on her face when Amy from Accounts Receivable walked into her office and there was a 300-pound dead dude with a baby's head sewn to his neck! Oh, fucking priceless! Hardest I've ever laughed. Gore also wrote in a letter to the judge that BRC's wrongdoings were not his fault because, quote, this was an industry that had no formal regulations to look for to look

to for guidance and I believe that many times I was simply overwhelmed and I tried to do the right thing but often enough I was so overwhelmed I just I panicked and I just decided to show a head on to somebody else's body right I looked at the manual can I do this it didn't say I couldn't this was also his excuse for having no qualified medical director or medically trained staff on board and for literally relying on YouTube tutorials to teach himself and his staff how to handle dismembered and stored donated bodies. Gore ended up being sentenced to one year of deferred prison time and four years of

probation after pleading guilty to operating in a legal enterprise based less on what he was doing to dead bodies and more on just not having, you know, good business practices like ethical business practices. He was also ordered to pay $121,000 in restitution to the families of those body parts who were sold illegally, you know, those, you know, whose body parts were sold illegally. He was only punished because his firm provided vendors with human tissue that they knew was diseased and didn't disclose that. And because they used the donations counter to be, you know, to the clearly expressed, you know, they didn't use the donations.

Oh my God, can't read my own notes. They used the donations counter to the clearly expressed wishes of the donors. For some reason, my brain, I flipped that to like there's a literal counter there and I'm picturing like he didn't use the donations counter correctly. Like people were putting like a fucking leg on a counter and he didn't there was some weird thing you didn't do right. Anyway, moving on just two years ago. In February of 2022, a jury awarded

58 and a half million dollars in compensatory and punitive damages against gore following the civil trial for mishandling the body parts of the donor's family's deceased loved ones. How many other companies just got away with that shit though? BRC and International Biological were not hole-in-the-wall companies that were operating in the dark shadows of the black market. These were, although unregulated, completely legal in most ways and very successful ventures, widely trusted by research institutions both in the US and abroad.

They were representative of the majority of the brokers in the body trade industry, their stories not unique. What Reuters wrote is true, in the US almost anyone can dissect and sell the dead. And to prove it, in 2017, an investigative journalist at Reuters attempted to purchase body parts from another well-known body broker in Tennessee called Restore Life USA. After a few email exchanges, the journalist was able to purchase a human cervical spine for $300 plus shipping. They later discovered it belonged to a 24-year-old man who had died of a heart attack while driving

home from a dialysis treatment at the hospital. Unable to afford cremation, his parents donated his body to Science Through Restore Life USA. Less than a month later, his spine was sold to the newspaper. Investigative reporter at Reuters, Brian Grow, had emailed Restore Life USA president James Byrd on August 29, 2016, inquiring about making a purchase. And Grow used his real name and his Reuters email account. His message read, We are seeking pricing, including shipping costs, to procure one cervical spine specimen for purposes of a research project

involving non-transplant tissue. An hour later, Bird responded, Thank you for your email. I do not believe we have worked with you in the past. How did you hear about our organization? Groh messaged back, claiming that Restore Life had been referred to him by an industry contact. Bird then replied asking him if he wanted a full cervical spine which included the vertebrae and tissue in the neck or just partial.

Gro said that he wanted a full spine. It was sold by the body broker. It would be 300 bucks plus 150 bucks in shipping. In total, the body broker only asked three other questions. Gro's billing address, whether he would like the spine frozen or thawed, and if the specimen would be used for medical research or medical education. The reporter said, it's being used for medical research, but didn't specify what kind. A month later, the spine arrived at a mailing address Reuters had leased.

Gro picked up the spine personally, then handed it over to a courier service that specializes in transporting human remains. The journalist then had the spine dropped off at the office of Angela MacArthur, director The spine personally then handed it over to a courier service that specializes in transporting human remains. The journalist then had the spine dropped off at the office of Angela MacArthur, Director of the Body Donation Program at the University of Minnesota Medical School, to have it examined. After surveying the remains and the documentation Restore Life USA provided with the purchase and comparing all that against her own standards of donation, MacArthur concluded that the medical history Restore Life provided was

insufficient, and that the accompanying paperwork was sloppy and inadequate. For these reasons, the specimens did not meet standards for use at the university. MacArthur was also quoted saying, I haven't seen anything this egregious before. I worry about the future of body donation and public trust in body donation when we have situations like this. A week after the spine arrived, Bird sent a follow-up email to Grow and let him know that if he was in the market, the body broker had two human heads available. 300 bucks each plus a knee and a foot for a discount. Bird also said that he was willing to offer a discount because he needed to free up some freezer space. Grow said he would take the two human heads. A month later,

they arrived at the same mailing address. This time, the package arrived in an unlabeled and in a cracked styrofoam container. Not only that, but neither head had an identification tag and the documentation that was provided by Restore Life USA was blank in multiple areas. There was no information on the name of the clients, the form of preservation, date and time of preservation, cause of death, nothing. When the investigation was over, Reuters had the cervical spine cremated, sent back to the family of the donor, and the two anonymous human heads are currently being stored at the University of Minnesota Medical School lab. So, interesting stuff, right? I never

thought about what happens to bodies. They're donated in science. This episode had to have been especially interesting for anyone listening who delivers packages for a living. As you listen to this, are there boxes full of human heads in the back of your van? There actually might be. Also, if anyone listening just wants to buy a box of heads, well, just head to Restore Life USA's website. Just restorelifeusa.org and click contact. You can call them, send them a letter, you can email them, you can fax them. You can stop by their office. 311 Cherokee Park Drive, Elizabethan, Tennessee. Ask if they need to have any heads or cock and balls moved to free up some of their freezer space and tell them Dan sent you.

And that's it for this edition of Time Suck Short Sucks. Sorry if I had some weird voice stuff. Allergies. Year-round allergies. They're so fun when you talk for a living. You never know when they're going to strike. If you enjoyed this, even if you take medicine every day. If you enjoyed this story, check out the rest of the Bad Magic catalog. Beefier episodes of Time Suck every Monday at noon Pacific time. New episodes of the now long-running paranormal podcast Scared to Death every Tuesday at midnight with original horror stories, the nightmare fuel episodes, showing up in the Scared to Death feed some Fridays. Thank you to Molly Jean Box for the initial research and thank you to Logan Keith recording and uploading today's episode.

Please go to BadMagicProductions.com for all your bad magic needs and have yourself a great weekend. Add Magic Productions