A bone to pick

Recently, Entertainment TV’s popular show Wild On did an hour-long segment on the Philippines (it hasn’t aired here yet, but I had an advance preview from the States). As you would expect, there was ample exposure of local spokesbabes and models wearing bikinis, as well as displays of banana-boating, water-skiing and volleyball in Boracay. There were obligatory shots of drunken revelers and lots of pixilated breasts, scenes that could have been substituted with any other Wild On location in the world. There was a bit of history, too, i.e., a visit to Fort Santiago in Intramuros. And there was plenty of eating: in one funny bit, foreign hostess Kristin Malia freaked out upon discovering the chick embryo inside her balut. All well and good.

But the segment that struck me, again proving there’s always something peculiar to be found in these parts, was the shopping trip to Cebu. Hostess Kristin paraded through the open market, determined to spend some money, when she came across a vendor selling extracted human teeth. Among the chickens, mojos and dried mangos, there was a cardboard chart labeled "THE HUMAN TEETH." On top of it sat a pile of diseased-looking molars and incisors that have probably seen better days. This again seemed to freak her out. She couldn’t fathom why anyone would be selling discarded human teeth on the open market, let alone why anyone would want to buy them.

"I don’t know what to say about that," Kristin muttered in her best Valley Girl voice. "That’s gross."

All shapes and sizes, Kristin. In fact, the Philippines has a bit of an underground reputation as one of the places to go if you want to find human bones, skulls and even complete skeletons for sale. I recall my father, before visiting here a few years back, asking me about the availability of human skulls. I said I would have to check.

I can only guess how my father, a science teacher in the US, came to believe there were skulls to be had in this country. In my fanciful version, my father met up with a collector of WWII souvenirs in the States at some point; perhaps he spotted a human skull in a display case and asked where it came from. The collector answered it was retrieved by an American G.I. from a fallen Japanese soldier. This was apparently common practice at the tail-end of the Pacific war.

But skulls may be of more recent vintage. There are those persistent rumors, urban myths and legends that have circulated since the Marcos days. Some of them are no doubt true. James Hamilton-Patterson describes such a trade in this lengthy passage from Ghosts of Manila:

If the victim’s dismembering was efficient, his rebuilding is expert. After many hours’ boiling the bones, all marrow leached out, leave ‘steam clean’ for ‘blow dry’: a large cabinet artfully constructed from the heating element and fans of a commercial tumble dryer. They are then spread out on a table and inspected for adhering gristle, shreds of cartilage and the like. Again they are brought to a boil in a pickling solution containing formaldehyde and left to steep and cool for 24 hours. During this time the bactericide penetrates areas of finely divided bones such as the sinuses in the skull.

The results of such craftsmanship – usually practiced on salvage or accident victims – is a reconstructed skeleton, suitable for export:

Usually the skeleton emerges unmarked, gleaming white, the loyal framework of a man who, four days ago, still walked the city’s streets, cracking jokes and making mistakes like getting into police patrol cars. So ecce homo: one export-quality skeleton for the use of medical departments, museums and ghoulish students thousands of miles away from his native land.

While Patterson insists his account is fiction, there are, as usual, many such tales circulating in Manila. As with most things, it’s probably true and not true at the same time.

Rumors of skullduggery and black-market bone dealing are so common here, there must be some basis in fact. Obviously, the biggest market for such objects – besides morbid, freakish collectors with names like Jeb and Zeke – would be medical universities and museums, which have legitimate use for human remains. But it’s difficult to find a country in the Western world that still admits to importing human skeletons. Most universities these days apparently prefer artificially-casted skulls and bones – plastic or polyresin compounds.

I decided to research further. Admittedly for me, "research" consists of sitting at my desk, surfing the net, asking whoever’s handy a few questions, and watching Wild On. At the end of the day, I didn’t learn too much about the availability of human skeletons in the Philippines, but I found out that I definitely need to get a real hobby.

It turns out that skeletons are still very available, at least to those with an inclination or means to find them. Medical students, for example. I talked with a doctor who said that universities, after completing autopsy demonstrations, simply dispose of the bodies, which are embalmed in formalin. This doctor noted that, at medical schools, "bones and skeletons are everywhere. It’s no big deal." It’s not too difficult, then, to imagine an enterprising student shipping some of these remains off to the black market. (Again, I really have to find a hobby.)

I texted another doctor with the following query: "DO U KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT HUMAN SKULLS 4 SALE HERE?"

He texted back this common-sense reply: "TRY THE CEMETERIES. FLOODS MAY HAVE UNEARTHED SOME."

Then there are those odd rumors that the Ifugaos, when they’re particularly strapped for cash, resort to selling off their ancestral remains for a pretty profit. No confirmation of this, however.

Further south we have the caves of Sagada, still advertised to foreign tourists as havens where Japanese soldiers once hid stashes of loot and jewelry (good luck finding such booty). Before that, the caves were used as ancestral burial grounds. In fact, the tourism website Marimari.com claims "it is quite common to discover skulls and bones" in the Sagada caves to this day. (Smuggling them out may be another matter. Probably a matter of slipping P400-P500 to the guide.)

Feeling no closer to uncovering the Manila black market for skulls and bones, I hit the Internet. It turns out that if you really need a skull, one of the best places to look is the website called Skulls Unlimited Inc. (www.skullsunlimited.com) The company was started by a childhood collector of animal skulls who quickly turned his disturbing little hobby into a global business: "As sales grew, my wife Kim and I began cleaning skulls in the kitchen," the owner notes. And dinner guests began canceling in large numbers, we would imagine. Skulls Unlimited boasts "8,000 square feet of laboratory and warehousing space" as well as thousands of skulls from the animal kingdom.

But alas, Yorick: no human skulls.

As a final resort, I checked out ebay.com, hoping to trace a connection back from the Internet to the Philippines. I was sadly disappointed. There is just about any bizarre collector’s item you could imagine on ebay, but there are no human skulls: only replicas rendered in crystal or plaster, available to anyone with strange tastes for $12.95 plus shipping.

They do make excellent ashtrays, though.