Human physique elements bought on social media as MP lists abdomen churning instances
WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy has put forward a Bill calling for the sale of human remains to be outlawed – listing sickening souvenirs on sale in the UK
Body parts including human skulls, brains and skin are being sold on sites including Facebook, Instagram, Etsy and eBay, horrified MPs have heard.
Labour backbencher Bell Ribeiro-Addy demanded action to tackle the “abhorrent” trade – with items like necklaces, wallets, crucifixes and candlesticks made from human remains. And she said some sellers even offer vile “lucky dip” bags of bones for as little as £50 – with no checks on where the body parts come from.
Ms Ribeiro-Addy told the Commons the trade must stop as she presented a Bill demanding it is made illegal. She said: “Human beings’ hair, teeth, skin and other organs are frequently sold by private traders to other private individuals entirely without regulation.”
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And in a harrowing address she said: “I must send apologies to members and give warning to anyone with a weak stomach because some of what I’m about to describe is truly stomach churning.”
She pointed to research by the British Association of Biological Anthropology and Osteo Archeology(BABAO), which has shared examples of sales that they have tracked over the years. Ms Ribeiro-Addy said: “These include human skulls and skeletal bones – partial or whole – shrunken skulls, elongated skulls, a Papa Golf Trophy Skull, a child’s shrunken head, and skulls that still have hair and soft tissue attached.
“They have encountered shops selling lucky dip bags of bones from small boxes for £50 to larger boxes for £90. They have also come across the sale of wet sample human organs preserved in specimen jars, including fetal heart and lungs, and even slices of human brain.
“And for members wondering what on earth someone would want with these remains, there is a substantial market for decorative objects made from human remains. One could purchase a wind chime made from a human skull cap with ribs and clavicles, a candlestick made from stacked human vertebrae, a finger crucifix pendant, a skull fitted with brass nails for teeth and turned into a lamp, necklaces made of teeth or even wallets fashioned from human leather.
“And all of this is entirely legal. I should stress that this is by no means the full extent of the sales that take place.”
The Labour backbencher added: “In 2026, one can sell a piece of human remains or an object partially consisting of human remains, with no checks on how those remains were acquired, no verification of how old these remains were, who they belonged to, whether consent was given or what the buyer intends to do with them.
“The biggest obstacle sellers face is not the law, but the use of rules of social media platforms and e-commerce sites such as Instagram, Facebook, eBay, Gumtree and Etsy. Even then, sellers routinely circumvent those rules through misspelling words, mislabeling real names as replicas, or advertise in collections without explicitly stating an intent to sell before completing transactions through private messages or in person.”
The MP continued: “At present, we have stronger licensing rules around animal remains than we do around some human remains.” And she stated: “Long after colonial rule in our acceptance that racism is wrong we continue to deny them dignity even in death.”
It comes after BABAO’s trading and sale of human remains task force raised the alarm. It said: “Globally today, the majority of the online human remains trade has moved from e-commerce platforms, such as eBay, Etsy, Marktplaats.nl, and Amazon.com, etc. to social media platforms (particularly Instagram, and restricted groups on Facebook) with, to date, very minimal intervention by platform moderators.
“The ability for buyer and seller to exchange more information and arrange the details of transactions via ‘direct messaging’ makes these social media platforms ideal hosts for a wide variety of illicit activity. In the rare instances when individual accounts are taken down, no effort is made to prevent the same individuals from resurfacing on the same or other platforms.”
