Meet The TikToker Selling Human Bones Online

If you've ever wanted to buy a human skull, good news: there are websites happy to sell you one. But where do the bones come from? VICE News' Dexter Thomas met with a TikToker who runs a business based on human remains.

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[JTCGiantz]

It's kinda scary that someone can think they're donating their body to some university for students to learn but then it is sold and goes all around the country and ends up in some person's house as a showpiece.

[Sushi-bishi]

The way he wears his clothes looks exactly like what a character from a game who has interest in bones looks like

[sahilnagpalx]

When someone donates something, that item shouldn't end up in a for-profit business end of story. The person never donated their remains to be put in a 22yo tiktoker's apartment as a means for making him money

[liveandloud]

“Everyone’s gotta pay rent” He can’t get behind burying them with respect, because he already views it as a commodity. Sad.
The crazy thing is when I was in anatomy class, the professor said all the figures were actual bones because they were cheaper than the replicas at that point. In the movie Poltergeist, those are real bones, the director said the same thing. Bones from India were cheaper than buying a replica.
My question as far as legality, it seems that possessing any type of bone is legal, but what about an eyeball? A heart, a lung? A man in PA was just arrested for this because he collected and sold human remains on FB marketplace. So my question is, where does the law begin and end on this?

[Bettinasisrg]

He kinda sidestepped the obvious that most people who want real bones are only interested in the fact they're real. As an anatomy student I would rather have fake bones then the worry about taking them home to study would be gone.

[corvin-bb]

Even if you donate your body to science it is entirely possible that your body will end up being sold to some shady company or somewhere else. A man donated his body to a local hospital and it ended up in a weapons test of the us military i.e. sold by the hospital. So the person in the video is doing exactly the same as "ethical" companies that take donations.

[bernardbass]

Your born
You go to school
You go to college
You find your dream job
You fall in love
You get married
You have kids
You retire and enjoy your later years
You get to see your grandkids
You die
YOU END UP ON THE WALL OF A 22 YEAR OLDS APARTMENT BEING PROMOTED ON TIKTOK

[lilyflower]

"But here at Johns bones"
He knows He is the only person that works there 🤣

[Vee]

I hope my Bones won't be sold to pay someone's Electricity Bills.

[Kaori]

I actually wrote my college thesis on this very subject. I entitled it " Fighting for the humanity in classroom bones: history of anatomical specimens"

This is a huge problem in universities and museums. Not even to mention private collectors. These bones were collected from essentially graves of poor people. Usually people of color and immigrants. In fact, there are records of slave owners selling the bodies of their slaves after they passed to medical schools. Not even to mention all of the human remains that were stolen from native American grave sites and taken as wardrophies during the genocide of native peoples in the United States.

It deeply disturbs me that we can sell human bodies that were not freely given by the people who once occupied them.

By still capitalizing on these people's bodies, It's perpetuating, the racist and horribly unjust system that allowed them to be taken in the first place.

[johndough]

The progression from animal to human is like a serial killer

[phisit]

Dude said “ I don’t believe in hoarding “.
Camera man “ pointing to the entire collections “ 😂

[sproutsisters]

Its gross to think my loved ones and my own bones will possibly end up being sold on this market because we marked ourselves as organ donors. I also read a story about a woman's remains being sold to a military company to test a rocket on...gross

[adambertilolof]

Eh, when I'm dead, I won't have any use for my bones anyway. It is not like my bones constitute what I am as a living person. After I die, there is just the memories of me until they also fade into oblivion.

[MR.GECKO-ih]

He literally said this was his way of paying rent lmao.

[thegoogs]

As a paleontologist, this makes my skin crawl. There is no way to profit off of the bone trade ethically.

[dsgrbrowne]

If i donate my body for science, I would rather be cremated than end up in a collectors house.

[Lau-]

as an archaeologist, this just feels wrong even to me 😟

[SquatCobbler-Cry]

I get it, we need to be able to study anatomy but, it should only be able to come from people who donate The Remains, Not from some person who selling some someone they don't even know about.

[shrimpandsilver]

Dudes acting like he's trying to get by but he clearly has money. Said he had half a mil minimum sitting in that room and then says he's gotta pay the rent hahaha