I never knew that bodies that are donated to science can be used to test military advances. Interesting!

When speaking of grave robbers people often think of times of patrolling constables and brick streets, but Body Brokers gives a bone chilling into the modern day practice of harvesting and selling body parts. What happens after you die and what you THINK happens after you die may be two different things.

disturbing! non-fiction book about people and companies that "broker" corpses, often against people's wishes.

Well done. Horrifying, but important. I just hope the public doesn't swing away from donations as a result, but instead clarify specific allowances for the use of their bodies.

Very disturbing and very informative. Now I don’t know what to do with my body when I die!

kind of similiar to 'stiff' by mary roach, but does offer some new insightsights making it still palpable if 'stff' is read first

The book starts with a narrative voice to tell the true story of a rogue funeral home. This first section of the book is compelling. However the author then goes into already well recounted events of body snatching before going back to contemporary events. These sections are far less engaging. The last third of the book takes it from 4 stars to two. The reporting was poorly structured and can’t seem to find a consistent point to follow, unlike the first part.

In Body Brokers, Annie Cheney exposes the shadowy world of tissue procurement organizations and the various different people that work within the industry. I really enjoyed this book; it was interesting, well written, and Cheney provides a logical and well structured argument. A must read for anyone planning on donating their body to science.

It was a very fast and interesting read. I learned and few things and I now know I will not be donating my body to science since the schools just cut you up and sell you for $50,000 or more. It is horrible that the money form the sales of your body parts does not go to the family you left behind.

Cheney's account of brokers stealing morgue cadavers slated for cremation and cutting them up for sale like so many pieces of meat makes a lie of the whole facade of benevolent, scientific, medical altruism in America.

We, in short, have reached the inevitable conclusion of Capitalism envisioned by Debord; a world where everybody, in the end, has been turned into a commodity, to be bought, packaged, and sold. The opening scene of a seminar in the banquet room of a swanky resort hotel in Florida (surgeons hunched over duck-taped torsos on carts arranged before an beautiful ocean view) is as best a summation of the whole mess-up state of affairs. A repulsive/irresistible car crash of a book.

Honey, I wish I can scrub my brain and rid them of the nasty that is body brokers. They sound like scumbags who only see the money and dress up their acts with flimsy justifications that it's all noble. And begrudgingly, I have to admit that they do have a point: a lot of people really don't know where their remains really go nowadays. That's how they can posthumously get exploited, shipped into another state through UPS or FedEx, and dehumanized into being a "product" for their "trade." Ugh.

My thanks to Cheney for doing the extensive research for this book. Even if I was throughly grossed out by the first ten pages. It definitely made me consider putting a thorough note about the handling of my carcass in my will. I would like to see an updated version of this now that ten years have passed from this book's publication.

I like reading books about interesting medical topics and the Body Brokers is one of these books. I had no idea that funeral homes can break down a body for individual parts and sell them to Brokers who in turn sell the parts to surgical seminars, learning institutes and other places. The remaining part of the body is cremated then given back to the family who hasn't a clue as to what happened to their persons body. At times the ashes are mixed together and taken out of a barrel to be given to the family.
It seems there is a lot of money to be made by being a body broker and very little regulation. It really is sketchy and it makes me wonder when my time comes if I will be rendered for pieces or if I will actually be returned whole to my family. Just another thing to think about.