If you’re a scientist, you say that your own understanding of the world comes from standing on the shoulders of giants. If you’re a doctor, it turns out that your knowledge comes from standing on the pilfered graves of dead Indians:

Alas poor Yorick

Medical students across the world rely on anatomical models to become informed doctors. What many don’t realize is that a large number of these models are stolen from graves in Calcutta, India. For 200 years, the city has been the center of a shadowy network of bone traders who snatch up skeletons in order to sell them to universities and hospitals abroad. In colonial times, British doctors hired thieves to dig up bodies from Indian cemeteries. Despite changes in laws, a similar process is going strong today. Throughout parts of Calcutta, many of the cemeteries have been empty for generations. [Link]

Last week Scott Carney broke the story of the human bone trade in West Bengal, with accounts at Wired, NPR and his own blog [Photos here].

Why Indian bones? Well, skeletons are hard to get in the west, so medical schools look elsewhere:

In the US, for instance, most corpses receive a prompt burial, and bodies donated to science usually end up on the dissection table, their bones sawed to pieces and destined for cremation. So most skeletons used for medical study come from overseas. [Link]

In 1985, the Chicago Tribune reported that India had exported about 60,000 skulls and skeletons the year before. The supply was sufficient for every medical student in the developed world to buy a bone box along with their textbooks. [Link]

See, everything really does come from India!

Twenty years ago, the bone trade was a legal multi-million dollar enterprise. This ended in 1986 with concerns that children were being killed for their skeletons:

In 1985 rumors began to surface that the bone dealers had run out of skeletons in Calcutta’s graveyards and were killing children for their skeletons. Child skeletons are rarer than adult skeletons and fetched a higher price on the market. A man was arrested for exporting more than 1,500 child skeletons. A member of the legislature accused him of murder and put the nail in the coffin for the legal industry. By 1986 exports had all but stopped and the 13 original bone exporters all seemingly shut their doors. [Link]

However, since demand continued and plastic models are seen as a poor substitute, a business opportunity remained to be exploited. A company called Young Brothers, located near the largest morgues and cemetaries in town, brazenly advertised human bones for sale in its catalogues. The business was well known in the neighborhood:

The main storefront, neighbors said, was emitting a stench so horrible that it could be detected several blocks away. Neighbors also reported that they had seen bones drying on the roof and skeletons boiling in massive tubs. [Link]

However, after the crackdown business has continued for Young Brothers, albeit more quietly:

Since then Young Brothers has been more discreet about it’s business affairs, but he hasn’t exactly shuttered his doors. His brother in law … pulled a fetal skull off the shelf and offered to sell it to me for $400. [Link]

The most recent Young Brothers catalog (2006-2007) takes care to inform customers that it abides by the law. It lists a wide assortment of bones at wholesale prices, noting that they’re “for sale in India only.” Indian skeletons are somehow making it out of the country anyway. [Link]

The police don’t think that cracking down on the trade is a high priority:

Indian authorities express a similar lack of concern. Although the international bone trade violates the national export law and local statutes against grave desecration, officials look the other way.”This is not a new thing,” says Rajeev Kumar, West Bengal’s deputy inspector general of police…”We are trying to implement the law based on the stress society places on it,” he adds. “Society does not see this as a very serious thing…” [Link]

Personally, I don’t care what happens to my own body after I’m dead. If people want to sell their own skeletons, that’s fine by me. However, stealing somebody’s bones is stealing their most personal property, and that’s just wrong. Sounds like somebody needs to be smacked with the jawbone of an ass.