# Executed prisoners used in beauty products? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 29, 2005, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/executed-prisoners-used-in-beauty-products/324066 "2005-09-29T18:35:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2005, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/executed-prisoners-used-in-beauty-products/324066/21 "2005-10-02T03:22:59Z")
Note that it appears to be well accepted that China sells transplantable organs from executed prisoners: [link](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1412467.stm), [link](http://www.nkrf.org.uk/pages/news/chinesetrade.htm). Is it a big step from that to marketing skin products? ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2005, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/executed-prisoners-used-in-beauty-products/324066/22 "2005-10-02T04:27:33Z")
Common guys look at how thin human skin is compared to say a cow hide. Can you picture the labor to skin a human? I am guessing that this headline will be on front of the Weekly World News next week. ---
**Author:** ![scm1001](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c4cdca/32.png) [@scm1001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scm1001)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2005, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/executed-prisoners-used-in-beauty-products/324066/23 "2005-10-02T09:14:29Z")
I think that one point missed here is that human collagen may be better than animal collagen because some people are allergic to the latter. Most human collagen is derived I think from either tissue cultures and placentas ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2005, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/executed-prisoners-used-in-beauty-products/324066/24 "2005-10-02T16:19:31Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > Note that it appears to be well accepted that China sells transplantable organs from executed prisoners: [link](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1412467.stm), [link](http://www.nkrf.org.uk/pages/news/chinesetrade.htm). Is it a big step from that to marketing skin products? Yes. Yes, it is. Human organs are the only things that can fulfill their tasks, with very few and rare exceptions. Human fat is hardly special enough to harvest when cow fat is so readily available. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2005, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/executed-prisoners-used-in-beauty-products/324066/25 "2005-10-02T16:26:23Z")
> [@scm1001](#): > > I think that one point missed here is that human collagen may be better than animal collagen because some people are allergic to the latter. Most human collagen is derived I think from either tissue cultures and placentas Even if human collagen isn’t actually better, I can easily see where people might assume that it would be better than collagen from animal sources. On a certain level, it kinda makes sense. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2005, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/executed-prisoners-used-in-beauty-products/324066/26 "2005-10-02T18:19:11Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Human fat is hardly special enough to harvest when cow fat is so readily available. The article doesn’t talk about harvesting human fat from executed prisoners. It focuses on the extraction of collagen from harvested skin. It includes this statement from a chinese agent: “We are still in the early days of selling these products, and clients from abroad are quite surprised that China can manufacture the same human collagen for less than 5% of what it costs in the west.” So the article’s direct contention is that this source of collagen is much less expensive than others. There is obviously room for debate on this. The Grauniad may be badly deceived, and I suppose you could argue that they may be trying to pull off a massive hoax (unlikely, as discovery of this would certainly cause their journalistic status to plummet). But the notion that this is an urban legend seems untenable. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/executed-prisoners-used-in-beauty-products/324066.md?page=1)