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 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.

A body parts trafficker was sentenced to prison for 4 years for his part in selling the dead body parts.  Henry Reid was in charged of the donated bodies program and the University of California at Los Angeles Medical School, and would sell the donated bodies to brokers.  It is estimated that Mr. Reid made in excess of $1 million in the selling of body parts. 

Read the story by the AFP at Google News. 

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.

American Michael Mastromarino has pleaded guilty of running a body brokering busy where he made several million dollars.

From the BBC News:

Medical supplies boss Michael Mastromarino made millions from removing body parts from corpses and selling them for transplant illegally.

One of the bodies plundered was that of famous BBC broadcaster Alistair Cooke.

Thousands of people received body part transplants supplied by Mastromarino’s firm, Biomedical Tissue Services.

The New Jersey company shipped bones, skin and tendons to tissue-processing companies such as Regeneration Technologies, LifeCell Corp and Tutogen Medical, which are in turn facing hundreds of civil lawsuits.

The bones of Alistar Cooke were sold for $11,000 after his death from cancer in 2004.

See more at our Human Tissue and Body Parts market page.

Transitions Online, a magazine covering the post-communist states, reports on the underground trade in human bones for medical students in Macedonia.

From Transition Online:

Like a character in a crime movie, Olga walked through the dark alleys of the city’s Taftalidje district late one February night. Waiting in the shadows was a person whose name she didn’t know. Olga had made a deal with him on the phone a few days before to buy a human skull.

“I don’t know this person. I don’t know what he looks like or how he will provide the skull,” said Olga, whose name was changed to protect her identity. “It was his idea to meet here in these alleys, and he insisted that it must be in the evening. I’m so afraid.”

Trade in human bones is illegal in Macedonia, so medical students like Olga turn to the black market to acquire skulls and other bones for hands-on home study of human anatomy. Students at the Medical Faculty of Sts. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje aren’t allowed to take the medical school’s bones home.

The risk of being caught buying bones is negligible, students say, compared with the possibility of failing the difficult anatomy exam that is required to receive a medical degree.

Students find bone dealers through friends at school. Most of the bones come from undertakers who steal them for sale.

See more data and information at our Human Tissue and Bones Market.