The business in human tissues generates revenue up to $1 billion a year, according to Martina Keller, author of “Cannibalized: The Human Corpse as a Resource”.

Please note that this $1 billion figure represents the legal industry in human tissue, and not the illegal trade.

Source: Martina Keller and Markus Grill, “Inside a Creepy Global Body Parts Business,” Spegel Online, August 28, 2009.

One dead body can make products worth more than $200,000, according to the LA Times.  Body parts such as human tissue, blood, bones and hands may be sold to tissue banks.

Source:  Alan Zarembo and Jessica Garrison, “Profit Drives Illegal Trade in Body Parts,” Los Angeles Times, March 7, 2004.

The Human Tissue and Body Parts market consists of the buying and selling of body parts taken from human cadavers. The supply of body parts are taken from bodies that are either donated to medical schools and other organizations, or stolen from morgues and cremation centers. As USA Today reported in 2006, ” unscrupulous employees at medical universities and similar organizations have taken bodies and removed spines, ears, heads and fingernails, which they have sold for personal profit.”

According to USA Today, brokers in human tissue and body parts gained a profit of $6 million over the course of 19 years.

Source: Stephanie Armour, ” Donated bodies sometimes are sold for personal profit,” USA TODAY, April 27, 2006, (accessed: March 9, 2007).

The price of a human cadaver varies depending on the way in which it is used. If the parts are dismembered and sold by piece (hand, foot, brain), then the broker will be able to gain a greater profit than if the cadaver was sold in whole.

Source: Annie Cheney, Body Brokers: Inside America’s Underground Trade In Human Remains, (New York: Broadway Books, 2006), pg. 80.

The Human Tissue and Body Parts market consists of the buying and selling of body parts taken from human cadavers. The supply of body parts are taken from bodies that are either donated to medical schools and other organizations, or stolen from morgues and cremation centers. As USA Today reported in 2006, ” unscrupulous employees at medical universities and similar organizations have taken bodies and removed spines, ears, heads and fingernails, which they have sold for personal profit.”

Source:  Stephanie Armour, “Donated bodies sometimes are sold for personal profit,” USA TODAY, April 27, 2006,(accessed: March 9, 2007).

According to USA Today, brokers in human tissue and body parts gained a profit of $6 million over the course of 19 years.

Source:  Stephanie Armour, “Illegal Trade in bodies shakes loved ones”, USA Today,  April 26, 2006, (accessed: April 28, 2006).

A 2007 case in California reported by the Los Angeles Times stated that an individual “made more than $1 million by selling cadavers and body parts”.

Source:  Charles Ornstein and Andrew Blankstein, “Two men charged in cadaver-trafficking scheme,” Los Angeles Times, March 7, 2007.

A reported by ABC News stated that dead Chinese bodies, which may have included executed prisoners, were sold for $200 to $300 on the black market.

Source:  Brian Ross, “N.Y., China Investigating Black Market in Bodies,” ABC News, February 15, 2008.