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Louisa Harken's avatar

Really hit my funny bone this one..

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Graham Lovelace's avatar

I remember around 1974/75 my secondary school bought a new skeleton for the biology lab. The old one had dark brown bones and missing bits (how, why … no idea). The new one had freshly bleached white bones, and was fully intact. Inevitably the questions came: where did the school buy it from? Who had it been? Our teacher was understandably cagey but said enough to suggest there was a thriving international skeleton market and that the Vietnam war had probably contributed to it. From that point on the skeleton became a person. And I’ve been opposed to the deeply unethical use of actual skeletons in education ever since.

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