At common law, there’s no property in human tissue or human remains; they’re not the kind of thing that can be owned, generally speaking. So, while “selling” human remains may not be a crime or may not be forbidden, it’s quite possible that the purchaser won’t get good title to any remains that are delivered to him under such a “sale”. And, in the right circumstances, somebody “selling” human remains might be open to a fraud charge, if he’s taking money, representing himself as transferring title to the remains in return, but not actually transferring title.
But there are cases where remains can be owned. At common law, while the default position is that human remains cannot be owned, there can be people entitled to possession of human remains, and charged with their disposal . (Executors, typically.) And if the human remains have been (lawfully) subjected by these people or under their authority to processes of skill (like articulating a skeleton for anatomical display purposes) then the resulting product can be owned.
Or, statutory intervention may result in a situation where human remains can be owned. For example, if there’s statutory regulation of the sale of human remains, that might create expressly or by implication the possibility of their being owned. Or laws regulating archaeology, or donation of bodies for medical/scientific purposes may have that outcome.
Or, a body might have been acquired in another jurisdiction, where legal ownership is possible.
But the bottom line, in a common law country, is that unless you know that the human remains offered for sale to you have become susceptible of ownership in one or other of these ways, it’s entirely possible that they can’t be owned, the person offering them for sale doesn’t own them, and you won’t own them if you pay for them.
You used to be able to just walk into a shop, “The Bone Room,” in California and buy one—I visited it twice, personally. Plenty of skeletons right out in the open, price tags and everything.—but not any more…because the storefront rent went up. You can still buy them on the website, though, but the physical showroom is only open by appointment only.
It looks like they don’t ship to Georgia, Tennessee or New York, though. So if you live there, you’d need to either road trip it to California, or ship it to just over the border and haul it back yourself. According to case law, IIRC, a skeleton wouldn’t count as a passenger to get in the carpool lane, in either case, FYI.
Oh, hey, it looks like they’re actually offering a slight discount on articulated skeletons at the moment…including one that was reportedly used as a prop on Dr. Kildare! Neato!
Maxilla and Mandible in NYC, a couple blocks from the American Museum of Natural History, billed itself as “The World’s First and Only Osteological Store.” They specialized in dinosaur and fossil bones and closed in 2011.
If only there were some word to use that ties together the concepts of the undead and threads created a long time ago. Alas, you can only dream.
It sounds weird, and didn’t happen often, but I have fond memories of going to church and then getting breakfast followed by the Bone Room (or the East Bay Vivarium). Kind of fatalistic, really. I had no idea the storefront closed, looks like just last summer.
Looks like the closing was also affected by the owner moving to Orange County, though she still has the same phone number.
I remember my college professors (who taught, among other things, human anatomy and physiology) permanently had a cardboard box in a front corner of the room full of human bones, various bits and pieces from 3 (not quite complete) skeletons that used to be mounted anatomical models. When he needed specific bones for specific lessons, he’d have to sort them out from the stack, (Two of the crania were whole, one had been disarticulated into the individual bones.) I had a work study job as a general TA/gopher for the biology department, so I got to spend a lot of time alone in the classroom playing with the bones.
I don’t know about buying or selling, but I certainly hope that it’s legal to own a human skeleton, because I have one myself. A very nice specimen, too: Fully articulated, and complete aside from one tooth. I don’t display it much, though: The carrying case is a pain to get open.
