tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/human-specimens-26435/articlesHuman specimens – The Conversation2021-03-24T12:26:56Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1565582021-03-24T12:26:56Z2021-03-24T12:26:56ZUS museums hold the remains of thousands of Black people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391268/original/file-20210323-19-88tz9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5300%2C3765&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Museums across the U.S., including at Harvard University, collected human remains, which were often displayed to the public.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-exterior-photograph-in-near-profile-view-of-agassiz-news-photo/513864946">Smith Collection/Gado/Archive Photos via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Among the human remains in Harvard University’s museum collections are those of 15 people who were probably enslaved African American people. Earlier this year, the school announced a new committee that will conduct a comprehensive survey of Harvard’s collections, develop new policies and propose ways to memorialize and repatriate the remains.</p>
<p>“We must begin to confront the reality of a past in which <a href="https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2021/steering-committee-on-human-remains-in-harvard-museum-collections/">academic curiosity and opportunity overwhelmed humanity</a>,” wrote Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow.</p>
<p>This dehumanizing history of collecting African American bodies as scientific specimens is not a problem just at Harvard. On April 12, 2021, The <a href="https://whyy.org/articles/penn-museum-to-repatriate-skulls-of-black-americans-and-slaves-from-cuba/">University of Pennsylvania announced</a> that its anthropology museum will return the skulls of 55 enslaved people from Cuba and the U.S. to their communities of origin for burial. And it apologized for possessing the remains, part of its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/us/Penn-museum-slavery-skulls-Morton-cranial.html">collection of 1,300 human skulls</a>, which were historically <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2007008">used to denigrate</a> the intelligence and character of Black people and Native Americans.</p>
<p>Other institutions have far more Black skeletons in their closets. <a href="https://core.tdar.org/document/434603/african-americans-and-nagpra-the-call-for-an-african-american-graves-protection-and-repatriation-act">By one estimate</a>, the Smithsonian Institution, Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Howard University hold the remains of some 2,000 African Americans among them. The total only increases when considering museums with remains from <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-troubling-origins-of-the-skeletons-in-a-new-york-museum">other populations</a> across the African diaspora. How many more sets of remains lie in museum storerooms across the United States, and whether or not they were collected with consent, is unknown.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=FFy5tMUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">As archaeologists</a>, <a href="https://www.american.edu/profiles/students/dj6541a.cfm">we understand</a> the impulse to gather human remains to tell our human story. Osteobiographies, life histories constructed from skeletal remains, can offer insights into nutritional, migratory, pathological and even political-economic <a href="https://doi.org/10.5744/bi.2019.1007">conditions of past populations</a>. However, scholars and activists across the U.S. are now seeking to recognize and redress the deep history of violence against Black bodies. Museums and society are finally confronting how the desires of science have at times eclipsed the demands of human rights.</p>
<p>How did the remains of so many Black people end up in collections, and what can be done about it?</p>
<h2>Collecting Black bodies</h2>
<p>The abuse and circulation of African American human remains for research dates back at least to 1763, with the dissection of corpses of the enslaved for the <a href="https://columbiaandslavery.columbia.edu/content/college-physicians-and-surgeons">first anatomy lecture</a> in the American Colonies.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="chest up portrait of Samuel Morton" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">American physician and naturalist Samuel Morton (1799-1861) collected human remains for pseudoscientific study.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/samuel-george-morton-american-physician-and-naturalist-news-photo/3239062">Hulton Archive/Archive Photos via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The systematic collection of African American remains, as well as those of people from other marginalized communities, began with the work of <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/samuel-morton">Samuel George Morton</a>. Considered the founder of American physical anthropology, Morton professionalized the acquisition of human remains in the name of scientific practice and education.</p>
<p>Morton boasted the first collection of human remains, at one point considered to be the <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo5820708.html">largest globally</a>. He used its subjects-turned-specimens to promote racist hierarchies through pseudoscientific interpretations of cranial measurements. His research resulted in his 1839 magnum opus, “<a href="http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/60411930R">Crania Americana</a>,” replete with hundreds of hand-drawn images of skulls and faulty-logic racial categorization.</p>
<p>His collection eventually ended up at the University of Pennsylvania. Only last year did the university <a href="https://www.thedp.com/article/2020/07/penn-museum-morton-cranial-collection-black-lives-matter">officially announce the collection</a> had been removed from a shelved display within an archaeology classroom. </p>
<p>The impact of Morton’s collection and career ricocheted far and wide, laying the foundation for unethical practices built on the theft, transportation and accumulation of human remains – especially of those most marginalized. Collecting <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-museums-rushed-fill-their-rooms-bones-180958424/">surged during the time of the Civil War</a>. From the late 19th century well into the 20th, <a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/161946">skeletal collections in museums across the country</a> skyrocketed.</p>
<p>Morton also influenced the ideology of biologist Louis Agassiz, his eventual collaborator. Agassiz founded Harvard’s <a href="https://mcz.harvard.edu/ornithology-history">Museum of Comparative Zoology</a>, which originally bore his name. His own collection practices around the photographed bodies of the enslaved have embroiled the university in <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/3/21/harvard-slavery-photo-lawsuit/">a public lawsuit</a>.</p>
<p>Institutions long embraced such collections primarily for the pseudoscientific work of justifying racial hierarchies. But they also enhanced their prestige by the number of remains in their collections that could be used for research as well as for exhibitions that fed the public’s morbid curiosity.</p>
<p>Eventually, most collecting institutions shifted away from these original goals but held on to human remains for teaching skeletal biology and testing new scientific methods. A majority of museum collections, however, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41771115">sit unused</a>, retained in the belief that they may help answer questions at some point in the future.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="woman holds historical photo of enslaved Black man" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shonrael Lanier holds a photo of her ancestor, Renty, an enslaved Black man. Her family has sued Harvard University for ownership of his image. Scientists’ photos of him and others were discovered in a museum basement in the 1970s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/shonrael-lanier-a-descendant-of-former-slave-renty-taylor-news-photo/1151246352">Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ultimately, the remains of African American people, freed or enslaved, are in these collections because the captivity of their bodies, both <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/185986/medical-apartheid-by-harriet-a-washington/">living</a> and <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674660410">deceased</a>, was the very foundation of museums of medicine, anthropology, archaeology, natural history and more. While some <a href="https://decolonizingmuseums.com/">academic</a> and <a href="https://www.aam-us.org/2020/01/01/knowing-better-doing-better-the-san-diego-museum-of-man-takes-a-holistic-approach-to-decolonization/">cultural</a> institutions have taken the initiative to confront their legacies with slavery – such as <a href="https://www.museumnext.com/article/what-does-it-mean-to-decolonize-a-museum/#:%7E:text=Decolonization%20is%20part%20of%20the,include%20Native%20people%20at%20every">decolonization</a> efforts to include more diverse perspectives and values – a national effort has yet to take shape.</p>
<h2>Desecrated in life and death</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/legislation-protect-african-american-burial-grounds-passes-senate-180976642/">U.S. Senate passed</a> the African American Burial Grounds Network Act in December 2020. <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1179/text">This bill</a> would establish a voluntary network to identify and protect often at-risk African American cemeteries. The program would be administered through the National Park Service, and nothing in the legislation would apply to private property without the consent of landowners. More than 50 prominent national, state and local organizations <a href="https://www.brown.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Letter%20to%20Senate%20Supporting%20S%202827.pdf">support the passage of the act into law</a> and are working to have it reintroduced in Congress’ current session.</p>
<p>But even this legislation does not include the remains of Black people in museum collections. Such an addition would be <a href="https://blog.historian4hire.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/AfricanAmericanGraves-1992-A.pdf">more in line</a> with the <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo21358784.html">Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act</a>, a 1990 federal law that addresses Native American human remains in all contexts – both in the ground and in collections. This work is necessary because many of the remains of Black people, like those of Native Americans, were taken without the consent of family, used in ways that contravened spiritual traditions, and treated with less respect than most others in society. </p>
<p>In the absence of such an addition, the work of finding all of the African American remains in museums will be unorganized and inconsistent. Institutions will need to make efforts on their own, which will cost more money and consume more resources. Even more importantly, the absence of a coordinated, national effort will mean the delay of justice for thousands of African American ancestors whose bodies have been, and continue to be, desecrated.</p>
<p><em>Article updated to include an <a href="https://www.penn.museum/documents/pressroom/MortonCollectionRepatriation-Press%20release.pdf">April 12, 2021 announcement</a> from The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.</em></p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156558/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Proposed legislation would identify and protect African American cemeteries. But it wouldn’t cover the remains of thousands of Black people in museum collections.Delande Justinvil, Doctoral Student in Anthropology, American UniversityChip Colwell, Associate Research Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado DenverLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/942842018-04-06T10:45:10Z2018-04-06T10:45:10ZRights of the dead and the living clash when scientists extract DNA from human remains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213471/original/file-20180405-189824-kw01re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=95%2C170%2C1730%2C1125&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Who gets to decide for the dead, such as this Egyptian mummy? </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Georgia-United-S-/ef10c29a61e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/2/0">AP Photo/Ric Feld</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The remains of a 6-inch long mummy from Chile are not those of a space alien, according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/science/ata-mummy-alien-chile.html">research</a>. The tiny body with its strange features – a pointed head, elongated bones – had been the subject of fierce debate over whether a UFO might have left it behind. The scientists gained access to the body, which is now in a private collection, and their DNA testing proved the remains are those of a human fetus. The undeveloped girl suffered from a bone disease and was the child of an unknown local Atacama woman.</p>
<p>This study was supposed to end the mummy’s controversy. Instead, it <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/science/atacama-mummy-chile.html">ignited another one</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213453/original/file-20180405-189801-taj750.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213453/original/file-20180405-189801-taj750.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213453/original/file-20180405-189801-taj750.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213453/original/file-20180405-189801-taj750.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213453/original/file-20180405-189801-taj750.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213453/original/file-20180405-189801-taj750.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213453/original/file-20180405-189801-taj750.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213453/original/file-20180405-189801-taj750.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The mummified fetus from the Atacama region of Chile.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/gr.223693.117">Bhattacharya S et al. 2018</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Authorities in Chile have <a href="https://gizmodo.com/chile-is-seriously-pissed-about-the-alien-mummy-study-1824177937">denounced the research</a>. They believe a looter plundered the girl from her grave and illegally took her from the country. The Chilean Society of Biological Anthropology issued a <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/chilean-scientists-outraged-by-research-on-infant-girls-mummy-rumored-to-be-of-an-alien/">damning statement</a>. It asked, “Could you imagine the same study carried out using the corpse of someone’s miscarried baby in Europe or America?”</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=FFy5tMUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">As an archaeologist</a>, I share in the excitement around how technology and techniques to study DNA are leaping ahead. As never before, the mysteries of our bodies and histories are finding exciting answers – from the revelation that <a href="http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-neanderthal-dna-humans-20171005-story.html">humans interbred</a> with Neanderthals, to how <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/new-genetic-map-of-britain-shows-successive-waves-of-immigration-going-back-10000-years-10117361.html">Britain was populated</a>, to <a href="https://www.livescience.com/62194-decapitated-mummy-ancient-dna.html">the enigma</a> of a decapitated Egyptian mummy.</p>
<p>But, I have also <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo21358784.html">closely studied</a> the history of collecting human remains for science. I am gravely concerned that the current “<a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/610597/industrialization-of-ancient-dna-search-sets-off-a-bone-rush/">bone rush</a>” to make new genetic discoveries has set off an ethical crisis.</p>
<h2>Plundering skulls for science</h2>
<p>We have seen a rush for human remains before. More than a century ago, anthropologists were eager to assemble <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo5820708.html">collections of skeletons</a>. They were building a science of humanity and needed samples of skulls and bones to determine evolutionary history and define the characteristics of human races.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213458/original/file-20180405-189830-6sjupq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213458/original/file-20180405-189830-6sjupq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213458/original/file-20180405-189830-6sjupq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213458/original/file-20180405-189830-6sjupq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213458/original/file-20180405-189830-6sjupq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213458/original/file-20180405-189830-6sjupq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213458/original/file-20180405-189830-6sjupq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213458/original/file-20180405-189830-6sjupq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Museums were mad for skeletons around the turn of the 20th century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/twm_news/5863367244">Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Researchers emptied cemeteries and excavated ancient tombs. They took skulls from massacre sites. “It is most unpleasant work to steal bones from a grave,” the father of anthropology, Franz Boas, <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/david-h-thomas/skull-wars/9780465092253/">once grumbled</a>, “but what is the use, someone has to do it.”</p>
<p>The case of Qisuk, an Inuit man, provides an especially <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/15/books/eskimo-boy-injustice-old-new-york-campaigning-writer-indicts-explorer-museum.html">egregious example</a>. In 1897, the explorer Robert Peary brought Qisuk and five others to New York from Greenland, so anthropologists could more easily study their culture. Four of them, including Qisuk, soon died of tuberculosis.</p>
<p>Anthropologists and doctors conspired to fake Qisuk’s burial to trick his surviving 8-year-old son, then dissected the body and defleshed the bones. Qisuk’s skeleton was mounted and hung at the American Museum of Natural History. (It is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/21/nyregion/about-new-york-a-museum-s-eskimo-skeletons-and-its-own.html">still disputed</a> today whether Qisuk was only stored at the museum or put on public display.)</p>
<p>By the end of the 20th century, <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674660410">U.S. museums held</a> the remains of some 200,000 Native American skeletons.</p>
<p>These skeletons helped write the American continent’s history and foster an appreciation for Native cultures. Yet the insights gleaned from these gathered remains came at a steep price: Native Americans’ <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ203622">religious freedoms</a> and <a href="https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/native-burials-human-rights-and-sacred-bones">human rights</a> were systematically violated. Many Native Americans believe their ancestors’ spirits have been left to wander. Others insist that all ancestors should be afforded honor and their graves should be protected. </p>
<p>Today, <a href="https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/in-the-smaller-scope-of-conscience">a U.S. federal law</a> provides for the return of stolen skeletons. Still, the legacy of these collections will haunt us for generations. Many Native Americans are <a href="https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/native-american-archaeology/">profoundly distrustful</a> of archaeologists. And even after nearly 30 years of active repatriation of human remains, there are still more than <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2011.540125">100,000 skeletons</a> in U.S. museums. By my estimation, it will take <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo21358784.html">238 years</a> to return these remains at this rate – if they are ever even returned at all.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213455/original/file-20180405-189830-kxr3l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213455/original/file-20180405-189830-kxr3l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213455/original/file-20180405-189830-kxr3l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213455/original/file-20180405-189830-kxr3l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213455/original/file-20180405-189830-kxr3l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213455/original/file-20180405-189830-kxr3l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213455/original/file-20180405-189830-kxr3l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213455/original/file-20180405-189830-kxr3l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Even nondestructive research methods – like the CT scan about to be performed on this 550-year-old Peruvian child mummy – raise ethical questions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_110427-N-2531L-135_Tori_Randall,_Ph.D._prepares_a_550-year_old_Peruvian_child_mummy_for_a_CT_scan.jpg">U.S. Navy/Samantha A. Lewis</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Seeking consent</h2>
<p>For too long scientists failed to ask basic ethical questions: Who should control collections of human remains? What are the positive and negative consequences of studies based on skeletons? And how can scientists work to enhance, rather than undermine, the rights of the people they study? </p>
<p>One place to look for answers is the <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/belmont-report/read-the-belmont-report/index.html">Belmont Report</a>. Published in 1979, this was the scientific community’s response to the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Tuskegee-Syphilis-Experiment/dp/0029166764">Tuskegee Study</a>. Over the course of 40 years, the U.S. government denied medical treatment to more than 400 black men infected with syphilis, to watch the disease’s evolution. In the aftermath of the resulting scandal, the Belmont Report insisted that biomedical researchers must have respect for people, try to do good as well as avoid harm, and fairly distribute the burdens and benefits of research.</p>
<p>Although these guidelines were intended for living subjects, they provide a framework to consider research on the dead. After all, research on the dead ultimately affects the living. One way to ensure these protections is to seek informed consent from individuals, kin, communities or legal authorities before conducting studies. </p>
<p>In some cases consultation may be unwarranted. A skeleton of our earliest human ancestor, at <a href="https://www.sapiens.org/evolution/oldest-homo-sapiens-fossils/">300,000 years old</a>, is a patrimony which all of us could claim. However, a fetus with birth defects that is <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/chile-mummy-ata-alien-dna/">40 years old</a> – even one sensationalized as a space alien – likely has kin and community that should be considered. Between these two extremes lies DNA research’s future of ethical engagement. </p>
<h2>Are humans specimens?</h2>
<p>In its defense, the journal Genome Research, which <a href="https://doi.org/10.1101/gr.223693.117">published the analysis</a> of the Chilean mummy, <a href="https://genome.cshlp.org/site/press/Genome_Res_2018_Sussman_gr_237842_118.pdf">stated that</a> the “specimen” – the girl – did not require special ethical consideration. She does not legally qualify as a “human subject” because <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/regulations/45-cfr-46/index.html#46.102">she is not living</a>. So disregarding the rights of descendants, the editors only concluded that the controversy “highlights the evolving nature of this field of research, and has prompted our commitment to initiate community discussions.” </p>
<p>To be sure, such discussions are desperately needed. In the same week that the mummy story hit the news, The New York Times published <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/science/david-reich-human-migrations.html">a profile of Harvard geneticist David Reich</a>. The article celebrates how the jump forward in DNA research has led to sudden, luminous advances in our understanding of humanity’s evolution and history. Reich said his dream is “to find ancient DNA from every culture known to archaeology everywhere in the world.” </p>
<p>It is a beautiful aspiration. But both scientists and society now know to ask: Where will this DNA come from? Who will give their consent?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94284/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chip Colwell receives funding from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. </span></em></p>Are DNA samples today’s version of the human skeletons that hung in 20th-century natural history museums? They can provide genetic revelations about our species’ history – but at an ethical price.Chip Colwell, Associate Research Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado DenverLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/751672017-05-24T09:26:14Z2017-05-24T09:26:14ZDecades on from Henrietta Lacks, we’re still struggling to find an adequate consent model<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170580/original/file-20170523-5757-19tv197.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 'immortal' HeLa cells.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/hela-cervical-cancer-cells-stained-coomassie-436526008?src=tF4E2RNrArwdwPBIKHBP_w-1-12">Heiti Paves/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When 30-year-old Henrietta Lacks walked through the doors of a Baltimore hospital in 1951 to get a “knot in the stomach” checked, she couldn’t have known she was about to change the face of medical research. </p>
<p>After undergoing a biopsy on her “knot”, Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer; it was so aggressive that she died only a few months later. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170579/original/file-20170523-5749-roqmx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170579/original/file-20170523-5749-roqmx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1545&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170579/original/file-20170523-5749-roqmx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170579/original/file-20170523-5749-roqmx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1545&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170579/original/file-20170523-5749-roqmx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1942&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170579/original/file-20170523-5749-roqmx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1942&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170579/original/file-20170523-5749-roqmx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1942&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henrietta Lacks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/oregonstateuniversity/4446362464/">Oregon State University/Flickr.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But that was not the end of Lacks’s “life”. A small part of the cervical biopsy was retained and conveyed to the hospital’s tissue culture laboratory. There Dr George Gey, head of the laboratory, had been working for a few years on a system whereby human cells would continuously divide and grow in culture dishes. Gey had had no success thus far, but when he placed Lacks’s cells in culture, they behaved very differently. </p>
<p>Lacks’s cells survived, multiplied, grew robustly, and continued to do so for weeks and months afterwards – subsequently generating the first <a href="http://bitesizebio.com/24304/how-to-become-immortal-generation-of-immortal-cell-lines/">immortalised human cell line</a>. </p>
<p>Gey never made a profit from these “HeLa” cells – named after Henrietta Lacks – but did distribute them to other scientists. Since then, the HeLa cells have been grown in countless laboratories across the globe and have now lived for twice as long outside Lacks’s body as they did inside it. </p>
<p>HeLa cells have revolutionised medical research, made countless contributions to medicine – from vaccine production to fertility treatment – and have been the foundation of a multi-billion dollar industry. But interestingly, Lacks’s own family were unaware of their existence until 1973.</p>
<h2>Bio-specimens in clinical research</h2>
<p>The HeLa story came to broader public attention in 2010, with the publication of Rebecca Skloot’s book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Although the book tells of the painful journey taken by Henrietta’s family, the topic of “informed consent” notably takes centre stage.</p>
<p>When Lacks’s cells were taken from her cervix, the practice of seeking consent was virtually unknown. Donated bio-specimens, similar to Henrietta’s cells, have been used for the advancement of medical research <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1860367/">for centuries</a>. But not every sample may have proven to be of as much significance as Henrietta’s.</p>
<p>Nowadays, biomedical research is more likely to encompass a large number of participants, and take place across multiple sites. Because of the range of data and information scientists can uncover, these participant studies help us to better understand diseases, create new diagnostic tools and personalise treatments. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.genomicsengland.co.uk/the-100000-genomes-project/">100,000 Genomes Project</a>, for example, is the largest study of its kind, using human samples to gain insight into rare diseases, develop accurate diagnoses and to help develop targeted therapies. To date, more than 20,000 genomes from patients and relatives with rare diseases, including cancer, have been sequenced, with the aim of passing the 100,000 genomes mark in 2018. Ambitious research like this is solely dependent on access to biological specimens, which are either voluntary donations from healthy individuals, samples taken for clinical diagnosis, or tissues collected post-mortem. </p>
<h2>Ethics and consent</h2>
<p>While this scientific work is exciting, and holds promises of a healthier future, the use of human bio-specimens does raise a number of legal, moral, ethical and social issues. </p>
<p>We, the scientists, have the responsibility of safe collection, retention, use and disposal of samples, as well as the protection of the data generated. This enormous task is constantly under scrutiny from numerous local and global committees, empowered by legislation and regulation, but ultimately it all boils down to one thing – informed consent.</p>
<p>When Henrietta’s cells were taken for biopsy, the concept of informed consent was non-existent. Informed consent signifies that the individual has been given full information about the research, its purpose, procedures, risks, benefits and potential outcomes, before they made voluntary decisions about their participation. This seems straightforward but there are concerns that its use does not go far enough.</p>
<p>Some studies are now using “<a href="https://theconversation.com/americans-want-a-say-in-what-happens-to-their-donated-blood-and-tissue-in-biobanks-60681">blanket consent</a>” which involves the participants consenting to all future research without limitations and conditions. Other studies opt for “<a href="https://www.genome.gov/27559024/informed-consent-special-considerations-for-genome-research/#_Broad_vs._specific">study-specific</a> consent”, whereby the specimen can only be used for the research project consent is given for.</p>
<p>All of these consent models have their <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-genom-083115-022536">benefits and limitations</a>, and laws and policies are continually being challenged and evolving to fit – but it’s still not quite there. </p>
<p>One recently suggested solution to improve participation is “<a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-genom-083115-022536">the dynamic consent model</a>”. This harnesses information technology to allow the interactive, ongoing engagement of the participants so they can make informed choices about what happens to their cells. It means donors can be contacted to consent for further use of their specimen, as the studies develop, to maximise the use of that sample.</p>
<p>These complexities are posing challenges to the scientific community, especially with the increasingly global and multi-centre nature of research, and could slow down potential medical advances.</p>
<p>It’s a careful balancing act, and one we need to get it just right. The interests of participants who are making generous contributions to medicine must be respected, while simplifying the process in order to make the most of these precious and altruistically donated samples.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75167/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maninder Ahluwalia does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Henrietta Lacks’s ‘immortal’ cells changed medical research – although she never knew that.Maninder Ahluwalia, Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Sciences, Cardiff Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/592192016-05-20T01:06:24Z2016-05-20T01:06:24ZKennewick Man will be reburied, but quandaries around human remains won’t<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123227/original/image-20160519-4451-1wr6n2y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This clay facial reconstruction of Kennewick Man, carefully sculpted around the morphological features of his skull, suggests how he may have looked alive nearly 9,000 years ago.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://newsdesk.si.edu/photos/kennewick-man">Brittney Tatchell, Smithsonian Institution</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A mysterious set of 9,000-year-old bones, unearthed nearly 20 years ago in Washington, is <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/over-9000-years-later-kennewick-man-will-be-given-native-american-burial-180958947/">finally going home</a>. Following bitter disputes, five Native American groups in the Pacific Northwest have come together to facilitate the reburial of an individual they know as “Ancient One.” One of the most complete prehistoric human skeletons discovered in North America, “Kennewick Man” also became the most controversial.</p>
<p>Two teenagers searching out a better view of a Columbia River speedboat race in 1996 were the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/scientists-mysterious-kennewick-man-looked-polynesian-and-came-from-far-away/2014/08/25/45411b2a-27b3-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html">first to spot Kennewick Man’s remains</a>. Since then, the bones have mostly been stored away from public view, carefully preserved in museum storerooms while subject to hotly contested legal battles.</p>
<p>Some anthropologists were eager to <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vnfv/ncurrent/full/nature14625.html?message-global=remove">scientifically test the bones</a> hoping for clues about who the first Americans were and where they came from. But many Native Americans hesitated to support this scientific scrutiny (including tests which permanently destroy or damage the original bone), arguing it was disrespectful to their ancient ancestor. They wanted him laid to rest.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123268/original/image-20160519-16754-15lmeug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123268/original/image-20160519-16754-15lmeug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123268/original/image-20160519-16754-15lmeug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123268/original/image-20160519-16754-15lmeug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123268/original/image-20160519-16754-15lmeug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123268/original/image-20160519-16754-15lmeug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123268/original/image-20160519-16754-15lmeug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123268/original/image-20160519-16754-15lmeug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kennewick Man’s remains had rested in the Columbia River Gorge for millennia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Columbia_River_Gorge_(3).jpg">Bleeding Skies</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This high-profile discovery served as an important, if maddening, test case for a significant new law, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (<a href="https://www.nps.gov/nagpra/">NAGPRA</a>). It aimed to address the problematic history behind museum human remains collections. First it mandated inventories – many museums, in fact, were unaware how large their skeletal collections really were. Then, in certain cases, it called for returning skeletons and mummies to their closest descendant group. Since NAGPRA passed in 1990, the National Park Service estimates <a href="https://www.nps.gov/nagpra/FAQ/INDEX.HTM#How_many">over 50,000 sets of human remains</a> have been repatriated in the United States.</p>
<p>The legal framework fits well in cases where ancestry could be determined – think remains found on a specific 19th-century battlefield – but other instances became more contentious. Scientists sometimes argued that very old remains, including Kennewick Man, represented earlier migrations into the Americas by groups who might have moved on long ago. This point of view often clashed with indigenous perspectives, particularly beliefs that their ancestors have lived in specific places since the dawn of time.</p>
<p>Drawn against this complex background, it’s no wonder it’s taken almost two decades to bring the Kennewick Man story into better focus. </p>
<h2>Long history of scientizing some human remains</h2>
<p>Museums in the U.S. and Europe have <a href="http://www.basicbooks.com/full-details?isbn=9780465092253">collected and studied human remains</a> for well over a century, with the practice gaining considerable momentum after the Civil War. Archaeologists, anatomists and a mishmash of amateurs – influenced by an array of emergent sciences and pseudosciences – gathered bones by the thousands, shipping them in boxes to museums in an effort to systematically study race and, gradually, human prehistory.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123273/original/image-20160519-16754-1a00vyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123273/original/image-20160519-16754-1a00vyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123273/original/image-20160519-16754-1a00vyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123273/original/image-20160519-16754-1a00vyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123273/original/image-20160519-16754-1a00vyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123273/original/image-20160519-16754-1a00vyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123273/original/image-20160519-16754-1a00vyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123273/original/image-20160519-16754-1a00vyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many museums in the United States store human remains collections in spaces colloquially known as ‘bone rooms.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/niklasstjerna/5314416884">N Stjerna</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Museum “bone rooms,” organized to collect and study human remains, helped facilitate new scientific work in the late 19th and early 20th century. The <a href="http://www.amazon.com/SKELETAL-BIOLOGY-PLAINS-OWSLEY-DOUGLAS/dp/1560980931">skeletons provided better data</a> about diseases and migration, as well as information about historic diet, with potential impact for living populations. </p>
<p>But building museum bone collections also represented major breaches in ethics surrounding traditional death and burial practices for many indigenous people across the Americas and around the world. For them, data gathering was simply not a priority. Instead, they sought to <a href="http://www.sagchip.org/news/files/PressRelease_2015-05-13.pdf">return their ancestors to the earth</a>. </p>
<p>Considered in context, the concerns raised by many Native Americans are not particularly difficult to comprehend. For example, doing archival research for my book <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674660410">“Bone Rooms,”</a> I learned of the case of several naturally mummified bodies discovered in the American Southwest in the 1870s. The dried corpses were paraded around San Francisco, before being exhibited for the public in Philadelphia and Chicago. Once the immense popularity of the exhibitions died down, the bodies were distributed to several museums across the country where they were put into storage.</p>
<p>Presenting human remains as purely scientific specimens and historical curiosities hurt living descendants by treating entire populations as scientific resources rather than human beings. And by focusing mainly on nonwhite groups, the practice reinforced in subtle and direct ways the scientific racism permeating the era. While some European American skeletons were collected by these museums for comparative purposes, their number was vastly outpaced by the number of Native American bodies collected during this same period.</p>
<p>Anthropologists and other scientists have worked to address some of these negative legacies. But the vestiges of past wrongdoings have left their mark on many museums across the country. Returning ancestral human remains, sacred artifacts and <a href="http://www.mohegan.nsn.us/press-room/recent-press-releases/press-release/2014/12/19/repatriation#">special objects</a> considered to hold collective cultural value attempts to serve as partial redress for these problematic histories.</p>
<h2>Kennewick Man’s odyssey</h2>
<p>Inaccurate initial media reports muddled the Kennewick Man story. After the first anthropologist who looked at the skull proclaimed a resemblance to European Americans (specifically the actor Patrick Stewart), a New York Times headline in 1998 announced, “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/02/us/old-skull-gets-white-looks-stirring-dispute.html?pagewanted=all">Old Skull Gets White Looks, Stirring Dispute</a>.” Indeed, as the paper commented, the bogus reports leading people to believe Kennewick Man might be a white person “heightened an already bitter and muddled battle over the rights to Kennewick Man’s remains and his origins.”</p>
<p>Hidden away from public view, the prehistoric remains were anything but forgotten. Many indigenous people came to view Kennewick Man as a symbol for the failings of the new NAGPRA law.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123270/original/image-20160519-4451-xz2oo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123270/original/image-20160519-4451-xz2oo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123270/original/image-20160519-4451-xz2oo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123270/original/image-20160519-4451-xz2oo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123270/original/image-20160519-4451-xz2oo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123270/original/image-20160519-4451-xz2oo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123270/original/image-20160519-4451-xz2oo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123270/original/image-20160519-4451-xz2oo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Forensic anthropologists at the National Museum of Natural History examined Kennewick Man during 16 days of study in 2005 and 2006.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://newsdesk.si.edu/photos/kennewick-man-1">Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.tamupress.com/product/Kennewick-Man,7921.aspx">Some scientists</a>, on the other hand, made impassioned arguments that the bones did not fall under the purview of the new rules. Their extreme age meant the remains were unlikely to be a direct ancestor of any living group. Following this logic, several influential scientists argued the bones should therefore be available for scientific study. Indeed, <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/kennewick-man-finally-freed-share-his-secrets-180952462/">extensive scientific tests</a> were carried out on the skeleton. </p>
<p>Two years after his discovery, Kennewick Man moved to the behind-the-scenes bone rooms at the Burke Museum on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle. The long tradition of gathering and interpreting human bones in museums made the decision seem almost natural. Still, it proved a highly problematic (and temporary) “solution” for many Native Americans who wanted the remains buried.</p>
<p>Last year, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/science/new-dna-results-show-kennewick-man-was-native-american.html">genetic testing finally proved</a> something many people had suggested for some time: Kennewick Man is <a href="http://doi.org/10.1038/nature14625">more closely related to Native Americans</a> than any other living human group.</p>
<h2>Reconciling scientific curiosity with scientific ethics</h2>
<p>Should human remains – including the rare, ancient or abnormal bodies sometimes considered especially valuable for science – ever be made into scientific specimens without their approval or that of their descendants? If we do choose to collect and study them for science, who controls the knowledge drawn from these bodies? </p>
<p>These are big questions. I argue that the effort to scientize the dead brings about distinct and specific responsibilities unique to human remains collections. Careful consideration is necessary. Cultural and historical context simply cannot be ignored. </p>
<p>By some estimates, museums today house <a href="http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/161946">more than half a million</a> individual Native American remains. Probably hundreds if not thousands of sets of skeletal remains will face these big questions in the coming decades.</p>
<p>Indicative of changing attitudes and ethical approaches to museum exhibition, recent calls to display Kennewick Man’s remains have largely been rebuked, despite potential for engaging large audiences. The prospect for new knowledge or effective popular education is tantalizing, but these objectives should never eclipse basic human and civil rights.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123269/original/image-20160519-4484-jrxzhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123269/original/image-20160519-4484-jrxzhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123269/original/image-20160519-4484-jrxzhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123269/original/image-20160519-4484-jrxzhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123269/original/image-20160519-4484-jrxzhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123269/original/image-20160519-4484-jrxzhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123269/original/image-20160519-4484-jrxzhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123269/original/image-20160519-4484-jrxzhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Museums across the country still have human remains in their bone rooms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wonderlane/4289519889">Wonderlane</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Two-and-a-half decades after NAGPRA, museums in the United States – including the American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History – join the Burke Museum in continuing to maintain sizable human remains collections. Kennewick Man may be among the most high-profile cases of human remains going under the microscope – both in terms of the scientific study he was subject to and the intensity of the debate surrounding him – but he is certainly far from alone.</p>
<p>Skeletons wait patiently while the living attempt to work these problems out, but this patience is granted only because the bones have no other choice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59219/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samuel Redman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A 9,000-year-old skeleton became a high-profile and highly contested case for the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. How do we respectfully deal with ancient human remains?Samuel Redman, Assistant Professor of History, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/570242016-04-08T09:33:55Z2016-04-08T09:33:55ZReconsidering Body Worlds: why do we still flock to exhibits of dead human beings?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117546/original/image-20160405-28973-55sy9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A morbid curiosity makes it hard not to be fascinated.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/yelp/14780580568">Yelp Inc.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Dr. Gunther von Hagens started using “<a href="http://www.bodyworlds.com/en/plastination/idea_plastination.html">plastination</a>” in the 1970s to preserve human bodies, he likely did not anticipate the wild success of the <em><a href="http://www.bodyworlds.com/en.html">Body Worlds</a></em> exhibitions that stem from his creation. <em>Body Worlds</em> has since hosted millions of visitors to its exhibits, including six spin-offs. The offshoots include a version on vital organs and another featuring plastinated animal remains. The process replaces natural bodily fluids with polymers that harden to create odorless and dry “specimens.” </p>
<p>Frozen in place, plastinated remains in the exhibits are rigidly posed – both for dramatic effect and to illustrate specific bodily features. Over 40 million museum visitors have <a href="http://www.bodyworlds.com/en/exhibitions/unparalleled_succress.html">encountered these exhibitions</a> in more than 100 different locations worldwide. Even copycat exhibits have taken off, eschewing <a href="http://www.aam-us.org/resources/assessment-programs/accreditation">accredited museums</a> in favor of places like the <a href="https://www.luxor.com/en/entertainment/bodies-the-exhibition.html">Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas</a>.</p>
<p>But <em>Body Worlds</em> – though seemingly an entirely modern phenomenon only made possible with futuristic plastic technology – <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674660410">emerges from a long tradition</a> of popular exhibits featuring actual and simulated human remains. What continues to draw so many people to human body exhibitions – even today?</p>
<h2>Early exhibits of human bodies</h2>
<p>For nearly as long as physicians and anatomists have attempted to understand the body, they have attempted to preserve, illustrate and present it. Cabinets of curiosities displayed in the homes of European nobility in the 16th century frequently included human skulls. As civic museums emerged in cities throughout Europe and the United States, some began to formally organize collections around anatomical questions. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117867/original/image-20160407-16252-uhfbbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117867/original/image-20160407-16252-uhfbbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117867/original/image-20160407-16252-uhfbbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117867/original/image-20160407-16252-uhfbbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117867/original/image-20160407-16252-uhfbbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117867/original/image-20160407-16252-uhfbbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117867/original/image-20160407-16252-uhfbbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117867/original/image-20160407-16252-uhfbbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Hyrtl Skull Collection at the Mütter Museum continues to be displayed together. Recently, the museum organized a ‘Save Our Skulls’ fundraising campaign in order to better conserve the collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://muttermuseum.org/proprietary-media/">George Widman, 2009, for the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Medical museums were often more interested in pathologies – abnormal medical conditions or disease. They also collected thousands of skulls and bones, attempting to address basic questions about race. Early on, medical museums were generally closed to the public, instead focusing on training medical students through hands-on experience with specimens. Almost reluctantly, they began opening their doors to the public. Once they did, they were surprised by the relatively large number of visitors curiously entering their galleries.</p>
<p>Medical museums were not the sole institutions housing and displaying remains, however. Collections aimed more squarely at the general public often included such items as well. The Army Medical Museum, for instance, located along the National Mall, exhibited human remains between 1887 and the 1960s (living on as the <a href="http://www.medicalmuseum.mil/">National Museum of Health and Medicine</a>). The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History built its own large body collections, especially during the early 20th century. Popular exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History exhibited human remains in New York City just steps from Central Park.</p>
<p>Notable exhibits featuring human remains or innovative reproductions were also wildly popular at World’s Fairs, including Chicago (1893), St. Louis (1904) and San Diego (1915), among many others. People crowded galleries even as these exhibits proved vexing to critics.</p>
<h2>Troubling transition from person to specimen</h2>
<p>In the quest to rapidly build collections, remains were sometimes collected under highly questionable ethical circumstances. Bodies were removed from graves and sold, gathered from hospitals near <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16295827">exhibitions reminiscent of human zoos</a>, and rounded up haphazardly from battlefields.</p>
<p>In the United States, the human body in the late 19th and early 20th century was racialized in almost every respect imaginable. Many people became <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520211681">obsessed with the supposed differentiations</a> between Native Americans, African Americans and European Americans – occasionally stretching claims into rigid hierarchies of humankind. The exhibitions dehumanized bodies by casting them as observable data points rather than actual human beings. </p>
<p>Some exhibits blended medical science and racial science in a bizarrely inaccurate manner. Medical doctors supported eugenics groups organizing temporary exhibits comparing hair and skulls from different apes and nonwhite humans, underscoring popular notions about the supposedly primitive nature of those outside of Western civilization. To our modern eyes, these attempts are obviously stained by scientific racism.</p>
<p>Eventually, the racialized science that had led to collecting thousands of skulls and other bones from people around the world came under increased scrutiny. The comparative study of race – dominating many early displays of human remains – was largely discredited. </p>
<p>Indigenous activists, tired of seeing <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Give-Me-My-Fathers-Body/dp/061345765X">their ancestors viewed as “specimens,”</a> also began pushing back against their display. Some exhibit planners began seeking other methods – including more sophisticated models – and exhibiting actual human remains became less prominent. </p>
<p>By midcentury it was less common to display actual human remains in museum exhibits. The occasional Egyptian mummy notwithstanding, museum remains were largely relegated behind the scenes to bone rooms.</p>
<h2>Specimen exhibits fade, temporarily</h2>
<p>With largely unfounded concern, museum administrators, curators and other critics worried audiences would be disgusted when shown vivid details about human anatomy. Gradually, as medical illustrations became better and easier to reproduce in textbooks, the need for demonstrations with real “specimens” seemed to dissipate.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117888/original/image-20160407-16260-13ii44p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117888/original/image-20160407-16260-13ii44p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117888/original/image-20160407-16260-13ii44p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117888/original/image-20160407-16260-13ii44p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117888/original/image-20160407-16260-13ii44p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117888/original/image-20160407-16260-13ii44p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117888/original/image-20160407-16260-13ii44p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117888/original/image-20160407-16260-13ii44p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Popular Science described a model from the 1939 World’s Fair, an alternative to real human specimens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tunnelbug/5419965583">Popular Science</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>First displayed at a World’s Fair in Chicago in 1933, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jikDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA56#v=onepage&q&f=false">see-through models of the human body</a> became a favorite attraction at medical exhibits in years to come. Models replicated actual human body parts rather than displaying them in preserved form. Exhibits were sometimes animated with light shows and synchronized lectures.</p>
<p>Later, in the 1960s, new transparent models were created for popular education. Eventually, some of the many transparent medical models wound up in science museums. Although popular, it remains unclear how effective the models were in either teaching visitors or inspiring them to learn more about the human body.</p>
<p>Over the years, methods for teaching anatomy shifted. Many medical museums even closed permanently. Those that could not dispose of collections by destroying them donated or sold them. Human body exhibits generally faded from public consciousness.</p>
<p>But after decades of declining visitor numbers, something surprising started happening at one of the nation’s most important medical museums. The <a href="http://muttermuseum.org">Mütter Museum’s displays</a> continued to draw heavily from its human remains collections even as similar institutions moved away from such exhibits. From the mid-1980s to 2007, the number of visitors entering the Mütter’s galleries grew from roughly 5,000 visitors per year to more than 60,000. Today, the museum is the most visited small museum in Philadelphia, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Medical-Museums-Past-Present-Future/dp/1904096212">hosting over 130,000 visitors annually</a>. </p>
<p>When <em>Body Worlds</em> began touring museums in the mid-1990s, it tapped into a curiosity in the U.S. that has probably always existed – a fascination with death and the human body.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117887/original/image-20160407-16254-rmz4ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117887/original/image-20160407-16254-rmz4ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117887/original/image-20160407-16254-rmz4ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117887/original/image-20160407-16254-rmz4ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117887/original/image-20160407-16254-rmz4ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117887/original/image-20160407-16254-rmz4ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117887/original/image-20160407-16254-rmz4ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117887/original/image-20160407-16254-rmz4ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It can be hard to remember this was once a living, breathing person.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pss/2252443224">Paul Stevenson</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Adding a gloss of scientization to the dead</h2>
<p>People are very often unsettled by seeing what were once living, breathing, human beings – people with emotions and families – turned into scientific specimens intended for public consumption. Despite whatever discomfort emerges, however, the curious appeal of medicalized body displays at public museums lingers, enough so to make them consistently appealing as fodder for popular exhibitions.</p>
<p><em>Body Worlds</em> states “health education” is its “primary goal,” elaborating that the bodies in exhibits are posed to suggest that we as humans are “<a href="http://www.bodyworlds.com/en/exhibitions/mission_exhibitions.html">naturally fragile in a mechanized world</a>.”</p>
<p>The exhibits are partially successful in achieving that mission. In tension with the message about human fragility, though, is the desire to preserve them by preventing their natural decay through technology.</p>
<p>With <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/08/health-class-no-longer-re_n_227805.html">public schools cutting health programs</a> in classrooms around the United States, it stands to reason people might seek this kind of body knowledge elsewhere. Models are never quite as uniquely <a href="https://archive.org/details/Responses_to_a_Human_Remains_Collection">appealing as actual flesh and bone</a>.</p>
<p>But while charged emotional responses have the potential to heighten curiosity, they can also inhibit learning. While museum administrators voiced concern that visitors would be horrified viewing actual human bodies on exhibit, the public has instead proven to have an almost insatiable thirst for seeing scientized dead.</p>
<p>In the face of this popularity, museums must fully consider the special implications and problems with these exhibitions when choosing to display human bodies.</p>
<p>One basic concern relates to the exact <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5637687">origins of these bodies</a>. Criticisms elicited an <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jan/23/arts.china">official response from von Hagens</a>. Major ethical differences exist between exhibitions including human remains where permission has been granted in advance by the deceased or through descendants and museum displays revealing bodies of individuals offered no choice in the matter.</p>
<p>Spiritually sacred objects and the remains of past people present unique issues which must be dealt with sensitively and on an individual basis. Cultural and historical context is important. Consulting with living ancestors is critical.</p>
<p>Exhibitors also need to do more to put these displays into greater historical context for visitors. Without it, visitors might mistake artfully posed cadavers as art pieces, which they most assuredly are not.</p>
<p>These are all issues we will likely be grappling with for years to come. If past history is suggestive of future trends, visitors will continue to be drawn to these exhibits as long as the human body remains mysterious and alluring.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57024/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samuel Redman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>You don’t have to be a physician or anatomist to be curious about how bodies work. Exhibits of dead human specimens have been around for quite a while – capitalizing on our fascination with death.Samuel Redman, Assistant Professor of History, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.