A new generation of tomb raiders

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Much of what we know about human anatomy and ancient civilizations can be credited to tomb raiders, who disinterred cultural artifacts as well as cadavers. Until fairly recent times the diggers were considered looters and criminals. Medieval medical students needing a human specimen to dissect would slip into cemeteries at night to steal a fresh corpse. That practice did not sit well with Christianity, which hallowed the human body as God's creation and home to the soul. Over time, science came to lend respectability to the diggers as researchers. In fact, they became entrepreneurs in the sale of human flesh, creating a booming worldwide market in the sale of body parts.Trading in body parts is illegal in the United States, but a loophole permits brokers to exact "processing fees" in supplying flesh and blood to eager buyers. A recent price list suggests that you and I may be worth more dead than alive. A human leg sells for $1,000, a foot for $400, a forearm $850. A single shoulder can fetch $650 on the human meat market.A human head can sell for $900 intact but for more if brain and skull are sold separately. According to Christopher Hart, writing in The Sunday Times of London, "Some American medical schools have even developed profitable sidelines as corpse wholesalers; since an entire cadaver can fetch as much as $100,000, it's easy to see why."We are in the middle of a new gold rush, "whose Klondike is the human body," says Donna Dickenson, professor of medical ethics and humanities at London University and author of "Body Shopping." Bone dust is in demand for periodontal surgery. So is skin for grafts in both burn cases and cosmetic surgery. Human fat is in demand for lip and breast enhancement.There are 160 capital offenses in China, whose government sells body parts of executed prisoners. The organs from a healthy specimen can yield up to a half-million dollars on the world market. When China began persecuting Falun Gong Buddhists in 1999, the number of liver transplants soared from 118 to more than 3,000 in just four years.More gruesome than trading in organs of the dead is the sale of living flesh. Many young women pay their way through college by selling their eggs for in-vitro fertilization. Germany and Italy have laws against the practice, but girls with a passport can travel to Spain or Britain, where the practice is legal. Poor villagers from India are persuaded to undergo painful surgery to sell their kidneys, earning as much as $800.Many Americans consider it a virtue to donate their organs after death to aid those who are still alive, but not for dealers to make a profit from the transaction.While Christianity reminds us that we were created from dust and to dust will return, it hails the resurrection of our bodies. "This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life" (Ezekiel 37:5).(David Yount's new book is "How the Quakers Invented America" (Rowman & Littlefield). He answers readers at P.O. Box 2758, Woodbridge, VA 22195 and dyount(at)erols.com.)