This book was so disturbing as it was non fiction. I didn't finish it because I was feeling sick from reading it

617.954 Cheney, 2006 -- QPB Catalog Winter 20€06

An interesting read diving deep into the world of the trade of human remains.

A dangerous read if you were planning on being cremated, autopsied, or donating your body to science.

This work of non-fiction is a quick read, but intensely gruesome and horrifying. It will make you look at human death and what happens to bodies afterwards in a whole new light. I found myself having to take breaks for a few deep breaths. It would make one heck of a horror film, and all the more horrible because it's true.

The selling of human remains is a very brisk, very lucrative business.

This was in interesting read and one of the few books out there on this subject. It did give some intriguing glimpse into the world but it feels like it just grazes the surface of the subject. It doesn't have alot of detailed information and focuses on the sensationalized cases without going in depth about the trade itself beyond the flagrant abuses. The other thing that bothered me is for a non-fiction book it at times read like a fiction book. Detailed descriptions of people as if they are a character in a romance novel left me with a jarring sense of what I was actually reading.

It’s hard to imagine subject matter more cringe-worthy than the for-profit tissue and body business. Perhaps this explains the relative obscurity of Annie Cheney’s Body Brokers: Inside America’s Underground Trade in Human Remains, a muckraking exposé on this for-profit, shockingly lucrative industry. Upon the book’s release, publications around the country gave it generally favorable reviews, and predicted that it should blow the lid off of this subject. But it never happened. Body Brokers is a slim book at 193 pages, expanded from a piece Cheney wrote for Harper’s, perhaps the first significant investigation into this issue. Since then, it has also been the last.

This is not for lack of talent on Cheney’s part. If a bit over-wrought at times, Body Brokers is engaging, fast-paced, and informative without being didactic. Most readers will be surprised that for-profit companies facilitate a large part of a non-profit tissue or body donation. And these companies make an, erm, killing off of them. When a person agrees to donate their body or tissue following their death, this material is distributed to medical supply companies and universities around the country.

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Full SevenPonds review:
http://blog.sevenponds.com/lending-in...

i read this a couple of years ago - fascinating for my morbid curiosity

This book is like a horrible car crash you can't turn away from despite the carnage. The subject matter was disturbing yet I read this cover to cover, only putting it down to sleep.

This books gives an amazing inside perspective on donating your body to science. It gives some great information on the underground trade in human remains (even if you don't intend to donate your body). It tells you how hospitals, morgues, and mortuaries get involved in the black market of body parts.

Definately a great read if you have considered donating your body. As for me, I want to be cremated so I can avoid these weird things- plus, I don't really want to be embalmed.

1. My overall takeaway: Yes, there needs to be more regulations for corpses. Especially stories like Michael Brown and everyone who gets the bodies without family consent. But, if families donate the bodies to science and the bodies go to science no matter how they get there, who cares? You are dead. Your body would otherwise be rotting in the ground becoming food for bugs and worms. If you can help doctors with their trade and that same doctor saves the life of a loved one of the body they are working on, the corpse has done its job.
2. I learned that grave robbers are called ghouls. 3. I learned that surgery comes from the Greek word cheirourgia meaning hand work.
4. Loved the quote by Epictetus, "You are a little soul carrying around a corpse."
5. Could you imagine finding freezers full of dead bodies like they did in Michael Brown's attic? And then later when the freezers smelled so bad?
6. This makes me want to go to the local funeral home and start asking questions.
7. Michael Brown's quote is pretty accurate, "There's no dignity in death...Put me in a boat. Light it with fuel and send me off like the Vikings."
8. The quote on Michael Brown's funeral home door. Oh geeze. "REMEMBER: Behind these doors is the most sacred room in the building. It is where loved ones come to be prepared for the most difficult event in a family's life. Those that work behind these doors pledge to each family a never-ending commitment of respect and service to those that place their trust in us." And then, "Every job is a self-portrait of the person who does it. Autograph your work with excellence."
9. One thing I didn't like about the book is that it never really seemed to circle back to Michael Brown. It sort of took on less of a narrative and talked more about history later in the book.
10. The author, Annie Cheney, talked about being in her hotel room, "After I got out of the bathtub, a feeling akin to defiance compelled me to call room service and order a rare hamburger. When it arrived, I sat down on the bed and ate the bloody meat in my underwear." Same, girl. A woman after my own heart.
11. I found the history interesting when it talked about unclaimed bodies being used for surgeons to practice on. (1830s)
12. HAVE to read the book Bones in the Basement: Post-Mortem Racism in Nineteenth Century Medical Training.
13. Grave torpedoes and mortsafes to keep grave robbers from digging up bodies. Crazy.
14. That story of Dr. Henri Le Caron (alias Dr. Charles O. Morton) where he had barrels of specimens being shipped and labeling them pickles to hide the fact that they were bodies. Omg. That's how they preserved some bodies. They would put salt and vinegar on them to keep them from smelling. So the doctor's specimens were literally pickles.
15. The book said that many people wouldn't think of selling a gift that someone gives them. They were speaking in regards to selling donated bodies. My thoughts, though, are that if you give someone a gift, it is no longer yours to care about. They can do whatever they want with the gift. Don't give something to someone if you still want a say on what happens to it.
16. The maddest I got in the book is when the people were dying because of bad donated tissue. Check the freaking stuff before you put it into another human.
17. This book along with Death's Acre by William M. Bass and Stiff by Mary Roach make me want to donate my body to science. Maybe I should be very specific and legal about it though.
18. Loved the story of the guys who were murdering people and selling them to doctors. Love in that it's an awesome story. Not that they were murdering people.