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Step 3

Interesting opportunity towards selling human body parts for cooking

In the recent years a new interesting practice has begun to take shape among some (new wave) mothers : placentophagy. As the birth has finished, the mother requests the placenta, takes it home and cooks it in various ways, and eats it together with relatives or friends. As this practice is relatively common among many mammals & also in different human cultures (ie. China) it is a rather periferic practice in Western/European culture.

The fact that this is possible (legally at least) opens up interesting opportunities towards creating an “exclusive” (but wholly legal) market for human body parts (as raw materials for exquisite recipes). I believe the steps would be the followings :

1. the body part – from the person to property : it is a matter of routine that a certain percentage of accidents and illnesses require certain body parts to be amputated (ie. legs, arms, etc.) or internal organs to be removed (ie. lungs, parts of the liver, kidney, etc.); once the body part is separated from the body, it is no longer part of the “holy legal sanctity of the person” and becomes just property (more precisely : the property of the former person). As such it seems pretty reasonable (at least legally) that people can hold those ex-body/person parts at home, as many of us hold artifacts/souvenirs of past people and places.
2. the property –  from body part to object : as the body part is no longer (legally at least) part of the person, it loses any kind of protection that “people” have and it’s now protected by the laws regarding “ownership”; as such, it can become insured (as an object and not as part of the former “person life insurance”) against theft or damage and also the owner can dispose of it in the way of the object : it can eat it alone, it can share it with friends or it could even exchange it for other human body parts or money

Through this complicated succesion of steps, a good deal of the parts of the human body can become objects of commercial and culinary activity. It carefully avoids bringing any harm to the “sanctity of the person” (ie. like in the classical cases of cannibalism) & moves towards commodity through the strong intuitions and laws regarding ownership. As such I would believe that right now there are no clear laws that would forbid the creation of a supermarket for “fresh” human body parts, that were being sold by their previous owners through the wonderful mechanism of free market economy. In an interesting twist of things the people who eat it are no longer legally cannibals even through they “enjoy” the forbidden fruit of eating from their peers.

Bon appetit!

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