Body Brokers

Fülszöveg

"YOU ARE A LITTLE SOUL CARRYING AROUND A CORPSE." —EPICTETUS
"WHEREVER THE CORPSE IS, THERE THE VULTURES WILL GATHER." —MATTHEW 24;28
ODY BROKERS is an audacious, disturbing, and compellingly written investigative exposé of a little-i<nown aspect of the "death care" world: the lucrative business of procuring, buying, and selling human cadavers and body parts.
Every year human corpses meant for anatomy classes, burial, or cremation find their way into the hands of a shadowy group of entrepreneurs who profit by buying and selling human remains. While the government has controls on organs and tissue meant for transplantation, these "body brokers" capitalize on the myriad other uses for dead bodies that receive no federal oversight whatsoever: commercial seminars to introduce new medical gadgetry; medical research studies and training courses; and U.S. Army landmine explosion tests. A single corpse used for these purposes can generate up to $10,000.
As journalist Annie Cheney... Tovább

Fülszöveg

"YOU ARE A LITTLE SOUL CARRYING AROUND A CORPSE." —EPICTETUS
"WHEREVER THE CORPSE IS, THERE THE VULTURES WILL GATHER." —MATTHEW 24;28
ODY BROKERS is an audacious, disturbing, and compellingly written investigative exposé of a little-i<nown aspect of the "death care" world: the lucrative business of procuring, buying, and selling human cadavers and body parts.
Every year human corpses meant for anatomy classes, burial, or cremation find their way into the hands of a shadowy group of entrepreneurs who profit by buying and selling human remains. While the government has controls on organs and tissue meant for transplantation, these "body brokers" capitalize on the myriad other uses for dead bodies that receive no federal oversight whatsoever: commercial seminars to introduce new medical gadgetry; medical research studies and training courses; and U.S. Army landmine explosion tests. A single corpse used for these purposes can generate up to $10,000.
As journalist Annie Cheney found while reporting on this subject over the course of three years, when there's that much money to be made with no federal regulation, there are all sorts of shady (and fascinating) characters who are willing to employ questionable practices—including deception and outright theft— to acquire, market, and distribute human bodies and parts. In Michigan and New York she discovers funeral directors who buy corpses from medical schools and supply the parts to surgical equipment companies and associations of surgeons. In California she meets a
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crematorium owner who sold the body parts of people he was supposed to cremate, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits. In Florida she attends a medical conference in a luxury hotel where fresh torsos are delivered in large coolers and displayed on gurneys in a room normally used for banquets. "That torso that you're living in right now is just flesh and bones. To me, it's a product," says the New Jer-sey-based broker presiding over the torsos. Tracing the origins of body brokering from the "resurrectionists" of the nineteenth century to the entrepreneurs of today, Cheney chronicles how demand for cadavers has long driven unscrupulous funeral home, crematorium, and medical school personnel to treat human bodies as commodities.
Gripping, often chilling, and sure to cause a reexamination of the American way of death, Body Brokers is a captivating work of first-person reportage.
ANNIE CHENEY'S
magazine work has appeared in Harper's and My Generation. Her Harper's article that is basis of this book was awai the 2005 Deadline Club Av. flii^P^- ^^ for Best Feature Reportin : the Society of Professional loii nalists. She has also contributed stories to numerous public radio shows, including NPR's All Things Considered. Cheney lives in New York City.
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Advance Praise for B O D Y BROKERS
"HORRIFYING! ANNIE CHENEY'S ACCOUNT IS M^ICULOUSLY REPORTEDfinMPELLINGLY WRITTEN. SHE USES DETAILS TO ANCHOR SCENES VISUALLY ANO THEN PUSHES THE READER TO VISUALIZE THE ENTREPRENEURIAL MANIPULATION OF CORPSES-'THEIR DISMEMBERMENT, SALE, ANO USE-AS BOTH GRUESOME ANDin|JTER-ol%T. SHE BACKS UP HER NARRATIVE WITH RESEARCH INTO HISTORYMUII'AND dRIME."
—SOCIETY OF PROFE^^^iSWJOURNALISTS 2005 FEATURE REPORTIffG AWARD, JUDGE'S" CITATION FOR "THE RESURRECTION MEN" (HARPER'S MAGAZINE), THE BASIS OF BODY BROKERS^
"[This is] the story of what I found when I immersed myself in the underground cadaver trade: a macabre world populated by odd, strangely alluring characters. The players in this business have an unusual relationship with death and dead bodies. To them, corpses are commodities like any other, something to be sold, like a television set or a new car.
"Over the course of my investigation, I found myself disturbed and sometimes even amused by their unusual take on death. Most of all, I was shocked to learn that American corporations, researchers, and even physicians have been supporting the underground traffic of these brokers for years. The cadaver trade is hidden in plain sight—in our hospitals, in our boardrooms, on our highways, and in our cemeteries "
—from BODY BROKERS
US $23.95/$33.95 CAN
ISBN 0-7679-1733-2
52395 Vissza