Cannibalised
A film by Wolfgang Luck and Martina Keller
Unnoticed by the public, a flourishing trade in body parts has developed between the Ukraine, Western Europe and the United States. Under scandalous circumstances, pathologists harvest bones, muscles, and even the skin from dead bodies in Kiev and other cities in the Ukraine. Relatives are tricked and put under pressure to agree to the so-called “tissue removal”. The extracted bone, cartilage, and tissue are then shipped to processing plants in Western Europe and the US. They supply the international market with medical implants made from parts of dead bodies – such as granules for oral reconstruction or support material for spinal surgery. Because hardly anyone in the West is willing to sign a tissue donor card the corpse traders obtain their raw material from Eastern Europe: Here poverty is great and controls are lax.