Shop

"Skin & Bone" documented how tissues taken from corpses in poor countries are used to make advanced medical and dental products for rich countries, fueling a Wall Street-bankrolled industry that has transformed what was once a non-profit system into a for-profit business. This story was not about well-regulated transplant organs but about tendons taken from corpses to repair injured knees, putty made of cadaver bone to restore teeth, skin from the dead used to replace breasts after cancer or to augment lips and penises through cosmetic surgery. The series exposed an ineffective regulatory system that does little to police the trafficking and processing of the material. The dead are, in effect, traded like pork bellies in a largely unregulated international market.