Horizon: How Much Is Your Dead Body Worth?

How much is your body worth? Rather a lot, it turns out. Horizon explores the revolutions in medicine that have fuelled the demand for human tissue and have caused the potential value of a human cadaver to rise to as much as
$250,000 over the past 20 years.

Society undoubtedly benefits from the medical advances made through the use of human tissue, but in some parts of the world – notably the United States – it has led to a grisly black-market trade in body parts.

In 2004, veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke died in his New York apartment. Eighteen months later, it emerged that his bones had been sold for $11,000. A body-brokering ring led by former dentist Michael Mastromarino had stolen body parts from over 1,000 bodies at funeral homes, making nearly £5m. When the crime was uncovered, it lifted the lid on the illegal trade in human tissue.

In the past, graves were robbed and body parts sold, in the most part, for medical research. Over the last two decades, however, there has been an escalation in the use of human tissue in transplant surgery. Corneas can now fetch as much as $6,000 a pair and heart valves $7,000 each.

It’s believed that if many more people donated their bodies to science, it might be possible to wipe out this illegal trade in dead bodies. Horizon explores how this legitimate supply of tissue could meet the demands of the medical industry and finally put the black marketeers out of business.

Tuesday 18 March
9.00-9.50pm, BBC TWO