r/mildyinteresting • u/The_Dean_France • May 05 '26

humankind hiccups šŸ˜… This is plain cruel...

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414

u/MikeyboyMC May 05 '26

Wait what the fuck

Is this actually real?

187

u/therealganjababe May 05 '26

Yep :/ and not as uncommon as one might think.

Totally F'd.

106

u/ST0IC_ May 05 '26

Unfortunately yes. Some guy basically came up with a scam where he convinced people to donate bodies for medical research, then he turned around and sold them to the military for blast tests.

Link to article

53

u/Bugbread May 06 '26

More of a two-step thing. The body was donated to a company controlled by a guy named Stephen Gore, and the company sold the body to a broker. Stephen Gore was convicted of fraud and given probation.

The broker was controlled by a guy named Arthur Rathburn, and the broker sold the body (and other bodies and body parts) to various organizations, including the Army. Arthur Rathburn was also convicted of fraud and sentenced to 9 years in prison + 3 years probation.

44

u/RustyR4m May 06 '26

I mean with a name like that

6

u/House_Of_Thoth May 07 '26

"Rathburn & Gore" sounds like the pair who sold Sweeney Todd his barber shop

3

u/IndependentTea355 May 07 '26

Nominal determinism

7

u/ST0IC_ May 06 '26

Thanks for filling in the gaps.

4

u/Fyrat May 06 '26

how do you become a body broker to the us army? it just kind of seems like the act of selling corpses is implicitly suspect to illegal activity

2

u/Bugbread May 06 '26

It's perfectly legal (not just for the US army, but also for hospitals, medical schools, etc.) if you do it right...though part of the problem was that Biological Resource Center and International Biological Inc. weren't doing it right, which is why their former owners were convicted of fraud.

1

u/gingerflakes May 09 '26

Donā€™t bring your dad class career day

1

u/Loyal_Dragon_69 May 06 '26

Is he related to Al Gore?

1

u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC May 07 '26

What are these Hideo Kojima ahh names?

1

u/MidnightSnowStar May 09 '26

Only 9 years? How many people did he scam?

1

u/INoMakeMistake May 09 '26

No respect bunch of aholes. Good they got a jail time

18

u/Quiet-Excitement-719 May 06 '26

Why canā€™t we just pre-sell our own bodies for $6000 then? Where do I give the military my info?

1

u/Clobazam_ May 06 '26

2019? Wow.

1

u/DueExample52 May 07 '26

We should strap that guy to a chair and blow him up

7

u/RiversSecondWife May 06 '26

I think John Oliver did a piece on this.

6

u/63Reddit May 06 '26

Can confirm, he did: Organ & Body Donations.

I donā€™t remember if I read about the post, or if it was in the video; but, both (the post & the video) are pretty fucked up.

2

u/SpoopyDuJour May 06 '26

Was just about to link to this, it's very informative.

Donate your body to known organizations that you trust and care about, folks!

4

u/AdenosineRuns May 06 '26

Usually when a body is ā€œdonated to scienceā€ it could be anything from life saving medical research to plastic surgery practice to crash test dummy etc etc etc, people arenā€™t supposed to be able to know where the cadavers go

2

u/Casswigirl11 May 06 '26

My high school science class has a preserved human brain in a bucket. No one knew where it came from and the current teacher at the time didn't know what to do with it because you can't just dispose of it. I wonder if it's still there...

1

u/Jolly-Elderberry6706 May 08 '26

Not only is it real, this story is super old. I graduated from college years ago and I remember reading this on ifunny in 8th Grade.

It does happen though. Not all science is peaceful science.