In America, lots of jobs require some kind of credential.

Want to be a lawyer? You'll need a license.

Dentist, license.

Electrician, accountant, taxi driver, license.

But if you want to chop up human bodies

and sell them to researchers and pharmaceutical companies?

I could take a person apart within 15 minutes, you know, bag it and put in the freezer and it's

ready to go.

I didn't have to have a funeral director's license.

I didn't have to have any type of medical degree or licensing

to take possession of a human body.

Many times I would be told, are you a doctor?

I go no. Are you a doctor? I don't know.

I don't want to say there's zero regulation, but yeah,

but there is really no regulation.

For the Freak economics radio network,

this is the economics of everyday things.

I'm Zachary Krakett.

Today, Cadavers Part 2.

In the first part of this series, we talked about the troubling history of cadavers in the United States,

how medical school anatomy labs used to obtain bodies from murders and grave robbers.

Those practices ended when the laws were changed to allow people like you and me to donate our bodies to science.

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