Expanding on an award-winning article previously published in Harper?s Magazine, journalist Annie Cheney dissects the network of unscrupulous entrepreneurs who, quite without permission, remove various body parts from cadavers and sell them to interested parties. Unless chance reveals the crime, most grieving relatives have no idea that portions of their loved ones? corpses have been purchased for use in commercial medical research, surgical equipment, or military land-mine testing. Readers who have never given thought to what happens after a body?s consignment to a morgue or funeral home will find Cheney?s research both compelling and grotesque.