18 human heads were found and seized at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport .The human heads had traveled around the world from the U.S. to Italy and back,The Examiner reports
Mary Paleologos, a spokeswoman for the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office, which took hold of the shipment on Monday for storage in its morgue cooler while authorities continued to investigate the paperwork.
On Tuesday, a cremation service arrived at the Medical Examiner’s Office with paperwork for the specimens. Once federal authorities confirm the paperwork, the specimens will be turned over to the cremation service, she said.
“The heads were originally sent from Illinois to a medical research facility in Rome and were returned to the Chicago area for disposal as part of the agreement for the order, said Paleologos” according to a Fox News Jan. 15, 2013 report.
Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport
U.S. Customs and Border Protection could not discuss the specific case because of privacy laws, but it said shipments of human remains into the U.S. “are not without precedent,” are lawful with the right documentation and fall within the agency’s “low-risk” category.
“Just last week, we transported eight heads, unembalmed, to Rush University Medical Center for an ophthalmology program,” said Paul Dudek, director of the Anatomical Gift Association of Illinois, which supplies cadavers and body parts to medical schools in the state for training students.
His association sends about 450 whole cadavers to medical schools each year and also ships individual body parts, including about a dozen shipments of heads annually.
The heads are used for training in fields such as dentistry, ophthalmology and neurology, where they are used for Alzheimer’s research. They are also used to train plastic surgeons and by students learning to perform facial reconstructions on accident and trauma victims, Dudek said.
Most cadavers are obtained through voluntary donation by people who designate a willingness to have their bodies benefit science upon their death, Dudek said. A much smaller proportion are the bodies of people whose families could not afford their burial and so agree to allow the state to release them for research.
By UP