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From Page One bones from A1
on eBay: a pearly cranium, sold with its own carrying case, cur- rent bid $779. The item descrip- tion notes that the skull is “used.” And how.
But bone dealers worry that theirs might be a dying business, threatened by foreign export laws. India and China used to be the main providers, but those supplies have all but disappeared.
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FRIDAY, JULY 16, 2010 If you’re an artist with a bone to pick, you may want to act quickly
Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes. Ostensibly, the bones are there for medical and dental schools — professionals who have a vested interest in knowing how the hip bone’s connected to the back bone. However, “we sell more bones
to artists than we do to science,” says Ronald Cauble, who has been running the Bone Room since 1987. “One of our biggest sales was to Damien Hirst,” he of the form-
aldehyde cows and diamond-en- crusted platinum skull. Hirst bought that particular skull else- where, but Cauble says he sold the artist a whole pile of other bones. “They haven’t become any art yet, to our knowledge,” Cauble says. “He’s renovating his castle, he’s sawing things in half, he’s doing sharks in formaldehyde. He’s busy.”
A mass shortage People have been known to purchase bones for unusual rea- sons. Skulls Unlimited is one of the only facilities in the country to offer full cadaver preparation, meaning that it will transform fleshy bodies into glistening skel- etons, with the assistance of der- mestid beetles. This is usually for medical institutions, but owner Jay Villemarette says that he re- cently cleaned a man’s skull to be
returned to the man’s widow. Vil- lemarette says that requests like this are rare, but adds that simple bone purchases are such that “we can barely keep up with the de- mand.” However, he notes, the bone in-
dustry is at a critical point, due to a mass shortage. The United States, with its efficient burial practices, has never been a good skeleton provider: Americans who donate their bodies to sci- ence usually go through an ac- credited university, in order to prevent illegal use. Buyers once got their bones
$5 Add A Line. Put your babysitter on speed dial.
from India, which did a brisk trade in expertly prepared skel- etons. Then in the 1980s, the Indi- an government made it illegal to export human remains. Whatever bone scavenging still happens is illicit. China picked up some of the supply slack, dealers say, but it never did the volume that India had. And the bone trade was halt- ed altogether in 2008 when the Chinese government cracked down. Now, most of what’s avail- able in the United States are the stockpiles — a dwindling stash that could run out within a few years. The medical community has turned to artificial models, which can replicate human skeletons to near perfection, but that type of substitution simply won’t do for artists or collectors. “It’s really been a terrible prob-
lem,” says Cauble. “You run into all sorts of cultural issues,” with various religious beliefs prohib- iting interfering with cadavers. He pauses. “And of course there’s the yuck factor.”
“Our skulls are running very
low,” says Villemarette. The few that he has in stock are expensive, running in the neighborhood of $1,400 to $1,600. Most of those are designated “Research Qual- ity,” meaning they can only be sold to doctors or academic insti- tutions. On the other hand, “we have lots of fibula. . . . And ribs? We have a lifetime supply of ribs.” Villemarette pauses. Maybe, he
says, “lifetime” is not a good word here.
But is it legal?
This is all well and good, but we live in America, land of laws. Surely someone has something to say about the legality of all this. Who would regulate the buying and selling of bones? The Nation- al Institutes of Health? “[We’re] not aware of any Fed-
eral laws on this particular point,” writes NIH spokesman Donald Ralbovsky, who then suggests calling the Department of Justice. “We can’t offer a blanket opin- ion on whether something would be legal,” writes DOJ’s Laura Sweeney. Perhaps the Federal Trade Commission? “We wouldn’t be involved in the
regulation,” says Mitch Katz of the FTC. “We would be more involved in a deceptive advertising aspect.” Meaning?
“If someone was representing it as a human femur, but it wasn’t a femur,” then the FTC might get in- volved.
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ulations that dictate what one can and cannot do with a human body. Bones of American Indians, for example, are protected by the Native American Graves Protec- tion and Repatriation Act. It’s ille- gal to make a profit on bones for transplantation purposes, just as it’s illegal with kidneys or livers. But in general, federal law does
TRACY A. WOODWARD/THE WASHINGTON POST
One of Benjamin Kelley’s works currently on view in D.C., where displaying bones in an art exhibition is not officially permissible.
“Our skulls are running very low.”
— Jay Villemarette, owner of Skulls Unlimited International
not specifically address the sale of human bones. States have their own laws.
Many allow bones to be pur- chased only for educational pur- poses. Evolution, for example, can only sell to medical professionals in order to comply with New York’s law. Ebay’s policy also says that bones must be purchased for research — but identities are easy enough to fudge online, where no one can tell the difference be- tween a medical student and a skinny Goth kid who needs the skull to represent the blackness of his soul. In
the District, possessing
bones is fine, but displaying them is not, writes Kate Stanton, a spokesperson for the D.C. attor- ney general’s office. “Exhibition requires a permit and use in an art exhibition would not be a per- missible exhibition . . . the typical permissible request is a medical convention,” she writes, not a Cadillac hood ornament. When Kelley, a graduate of the
Maryland Institute College of Art, is informed that his artwork might be illegal, he debates the technicalities: “I’m not using the entire bone,” he says. “I’ve broken it down into dust and altered it into a different form. Does that make a difference?” Not according to Stanton. “Does the artist specifically call attention to the fact that the pig- ments include human remains?” she asks. By identifying the bones as human remains, Kelley has shown a lack of respect for the dead. In any case, if Kelley is investi-
gated for his bone work, he won’t be the first artist. Washington area artist Erik
Thor Sandberg has bought sever- al human bones to use as models for his paintings. His purchases once caught the attention of the FBI. “They asked, ‘How many skulls do you own?’ ” Sandberg says. “I said, well, what would you consider a skull? If you add up all the [bone] fragments, it’s prob- ably only three and a quarter.” The feds halted the questioning when Sandberg gave his profes- sion. “You could be doing the weirdest thing ever,” Sandberg says, “but if you say, ‘I’m an artist,’ then people will leave you alone.”
hessem@washpost.com
Staff researcher Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report.
Panel agrees to protect jobs, add mission for space shuttle
Reuters
A key Senate committee unani- mously passed a plan Thursday to postpone retirement of the space shuttle as part of a job-saving compromise to the Obama ad- ministration’s wish to end NASA’s program to return astronauts to the moon. The NASA plan approved by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee supports President Obama’s call to end the moon-bound Constel- lation program.
But the three-year NASA spending plan passed by the com- mittee adds a $1 billion shuttle mission to the international space station for next summer or fall and leaves contracts, equip- ment and personnel in place in case other flights are needed. The administration broadly
supported the committee plan. “This is a milestone in the re- alignment of the space program for the 21st century,” said Lori Garver, NASA’s deputy adminis- trator. “It preserves the most im- portant parts of the president’s
plan.” The legislation, which must be approved by the full Senate, was also praised by the politicians in states that were facing the loss of jobs because of the proposed shift in emphasis. “I am extremely pleased that
we have been able to work out a bipartisan compromise on the NASA authorization legislation,” said Kay Bailey Hutchison (R- Tex.), a vocal opponent of the Obama plan. “It has been a long and very hard road to get here.” The coming retirement of the space shuttle is imperiling thou- sands of jobs at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida as well as jobs in Texas, Alabama and Utah. The plan leaves intact the White House’s $19 billion fund- ing request for NASA for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, an increase over the current year. Rather than focusing on the moon, the Senate committee bill, like the administration plan, calls for a program to be flexible enough to reach different destinations.
Staff writer Marc Kaufman contributed to this report.
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