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silverman987 t1_j2unoz3 wrote

Reply to comment by DeffNotTom in Former Colorado funeral home owner sentenced to 20 yrs for selling body parts by Ice_Burn

according to the article: "It is illegal in the United States to sell organs such as hearts, kidneys and tendons for transplant; they must be donated. But selling body parts such as heads, arms and spines – which is what Hess did – for use in research or education is not regulated by federal law."

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DeffNotTom t1_j2uq7j3 wrote

Disingenuous wording there. It's illegal to steal body parts for any reason, which is what that person did. The two main categories of selling human remains are for legitimate education and research, which has a massive paper trail.. and collectors who deal on antiques. If you're selling or buying new human specimens as a collector, they're 100% stolen and you're already breaking the law.

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silverman987 t1_j2usaud wrote

How is the wording disingenuous? The article says "selling body parts such as heads, arms and spines ... for use in research or education is not regulated by federal law."

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newluna t1_j2xnyzm wrote

Selling anything stolen is illegal. The reason heart and other common life-saving organs are illegal to sell at all is that allowing so will create a whole lot of abuse. That doesn’t mean you can sell a “sellable” organ without the consent of the donor or their next of kin.

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silverman987 t1_j2xowsk wrote

Correct and I didn't say you can. I'm only responding to OPs statement that there are regulations when in the article it clearly states there is not. Honestly, if there was this would not happen as often or be done so easily.

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DeffNotTom t1_j2utc5b wrote

It's illegal to steal body parts from people. You need consent from the person before they die, or from their family, in order to do anything with them. Anyone buying body parts for a legitimate purpose ensures they have that paperwork. You cannot just walk into a funeral home and buy body parts. That's regulation. In a lot of those cases, the funeral home got consent from families through fraud or forged documents and sold to legitimate buyers who thought they had the right paperwork. They would have had everything they needed to beat the government in attempts of anymore oversight. In other cases she straight stole body parts and sold them on the black market in a way that wouldn't have been reported anyway. I'm not sure how you think the government is going to regulate someone selling things out of the backdoor of a funeral home when you can't check if the urn you got had all your loved ones pieces in it.

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silverman987 t1_j2uu39n wrote

I was responding to your initial comment about regulation. You wrote it's regulated. The article says it's not regulated, at least not federally. Locally may be different, but on a federal level, there is no regulation.

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DeffNotTom t1_j2uwl58 wrote

Again, it's disingenuous. It makes it sounds like there's a free for all and anyone can just purchase body parts from a funeral home. That's very obviouly not the case. Next time a loved one dies, try to keep anything other than created remains, or try to buy some that aren't from some antique medical collection. Get a signed contract, a will, religious declaratio, whatever legal documents you can think of. You can't. You're not going to write laws that will stop some shithead who's already breaking the law.

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silverman987 t1_j2uwpln wrote

But I'm not. I'm just simply stating a fact. I'm pretty sure we're talking about different things now. This conversation is over.

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DeffNotTom t1_j2ux5id wrote

"it's disingenuous" "How" "Because it makes it sound worse than it is" "We're talking about different things"

K

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