• JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Apparently there’s no federal law (in the US) banning the ownership of human bones because up until the mid to late 20th century it was apparently common practice for med students to purchase real human bones for their studies. Most of them apparently came from India, until the country banned the export of human remains, which must have played a part in causing the practice to fall out of style.

    If anyone has anything to correct/add, please do so. This was just a quick google search out of morbid curiosity

    • Iheartcheese@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I know the POTC ride had a bunch of real skulls (and a few are still there) because, at the time, they were cheaper and easier to get then good looking fakes.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 months ago

        there was apparently one amusement park ride that ended up getting its hands on a literal corpse of a human, only to be discovered when one of the arms broke off while someone was moving it.

        apparently, the corpse in particular, was that of a notorious criminal who nobody really liked, so some fuckwit decided it would be funny to preserve his body and put it up for exhibition. And then it just kinda, continued from there, until it was discovered.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            2 months ago

            there was definitely room somewhere along the line for numerous parties to never discover it, but at some point somebody inevitably would’ve discovered it, preserved bodies aren’t exactly the most “durable” of things.

      • 3ntranced@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        It’s only 1 still inside the ride. I can’t remember if it was always only one but it’s the skull on the crossbones above the throne towards the end of the ride.

    • hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      The reason India stopped that is because they realized they were exporting way too many human skeletons and way too many child skeletons in that, so they eventually realized that this meant there were mass murders involved. India to this day has problems with that but it’s become better.

      Here’s an interview of a guy who went underground to familiarize himself with the problem and even talked to a bunch of people involved. It’s a great video :)

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP76ekb_DxI

      • TheSlad@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        My highschool biology classroom had the skeleton of an indian tween in a closet. It had been professionally skeletonized and rigged up and everything. The bio teacher swore it was there when he started teaching and that he doesnt know anything about it…

        He also had a human fetus preserved in a jar of formaldehyde.

    • Who knew?@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      It’s true. My aunt had the skeleton of a person, probably from India, for use when she was in medical school in the '80s. She took him on the bus with her in a bigass suitcase I guess. They talked about it as if it wasn’t fucked up.