#humanremains

The shady side of #VultureCulture

So get this: Some guy (perhaps well-meaning, albeit delusional) operating an entertainment business under the name Death Science, organized a dissection demonstration of a man’s cadaver at the Oddities & Curiosities Expo without the family’s permission. The man’s widow didn't learn what happened until she was contacted by a reporter for comment (classy…) The dissection was a pay-per-view and live event being featured as part of the traveling Oddities & Curiosities Expo during its stop in Portland. Owner of Death Science, Jeremy Ciliberto, has no ties to the medical field (nor any other professional credentials) and describes himself as a “macabre artist, producer, and production designer”.  In order to acquire the body, Ciliberto purportedly lied to the sloppily operated Las Vegas-based cadaver supplier Med Ed Labs Inc about his credentials and what the body was going to be used for. The family had donated the body to science with the understanding that it would be dissected for the advancement of medical students. Instead, the for-profit spectacle was open to any members of the public who wanted a ticket to the dissection, which was held in a hotel ballroom separate from the expo vendors and other workshops. Front row seats were $500 a pop and part of that price included an invitation to touch the body; fantastic, because the body was later deemed a potential infectious disease risk because the man had died of Covid! Med Ed Labs sold the body to Ciliberto without doing a background check on him, a big no-no in the first place, but an even bigger no-no because Med Ed knew they were selling a body that was officially classified as a bio-hazard. After this start-to-finish fiasco, the wife now wants her husband’s remains back for cremation. The funeral chapel that embalmed the body before releasing it to Med Ed Labs (per the family’s wishes) was equally as horrified as the family because they too had been duped into thinking the body was going to be donated to science. The chapel said in an interview “We will track down her husband’s remains and cremate them for free”. Um… yeah… I can guarantee that if the chapel is actually able to locate his remains, that there are going to be substantial parts of the body unaccounted for… If you are familiar with the oddities and curiosities subculture, you have probably noticed there is a plethora of social media accounts that peddle artifacts derived from human bodies. I have no doubt that following the dissection leftover parts of the man’s body were sold to collectors behind closed doors. That last statement is educated conjecture on my part, however, everything else in this post was taken directly from news sources. So many bad actors were involved here that it’s hard to place blame on just one person. My heart goes out to the man’s wife. I cannot imagine how upsetting this has been, and how it will continue to haunt her for the rest of her life...

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