蜜芽传媒

The cost of a wholly intact corpse is expensive. As a result, MediTech companies and 鈥渂ody brokerages鈥� in the US have a complicated and, in some instances, deeply unsettling relationship to the purchasing and selling of them for testing. From chopping bodies up, to illegally trafficking cadavers wholesale without the consent of the host or the family, some of these companies harbour secrets that are just beginning to surface.

Cherise Silvestri navigates a complicated and bloody series of personal accounts - from the hand of a father showing up in the back of a truck to the sale of one woman鈥檚 daughter. Speaking with marketeers inside the industry and data scientists seeking to put checks on it, what emerges is a complex moral portrait of the costs and advantages to freely selling human beings.

From ballistic sites to incinerators, student seminars to plastic surgeries, the transition from donation to de facto sales sparks huge controversies over how we can make sense of 鈥渃onsent鈥� in this business. Advocates of the trade often point out the necessity of a ready supply of bodies in scientific research and development. How else, for example, would new doctors be able to train? However, with the lure of high profits and little red tape, the illegal trade grows and spreads. With only seven such companies being accredited, out of the hundreds operating across the USA, the market raises big questions about how we value and treat human beings - not only in life, but in death.

Speaking with industry insiders, scientists and the families affected by the global trade, this documentary addresses the impact on how we think about the economic, medical and fundamentally moral issues surrounding human life.

A 2 Degrees West production for 蜜芽传媒 Radio 4