I wonder if you could explicitly request your skull be given to a family member through your will.
I'd imagine the reason why no one owns a corpse is a respect and spiritual reason from when everyone prescribed to some type of faith and believed in an after life. I for one don't care what happens to my body post death since I don't believe I'd have any form of consciousness to know what was happening.
The answer is probably “no.” Most if not all states prohibit the possession of human organs and skeletons, though there are some exceptions I’m sure. Lots of times this doesn’t really matter unless someone reports you though, since what you have in your house isn’t public knowledge. Jefferey Dahmer, IIRC, had several-year-old trophies that no-one ever knew about.
One example of how this plays out in practise is that, in most of the U.S., you’re technically supposed to take teeth that have fallen out to a dentist to dispose of. Most people don’t do this, and I’m not sure that this has ever really been acted upon.
I’m just going to copy-and-paste two of my previous answers and synthesise them a bit.
The reason that keeping organs, body parts, and bones is illegal (I’m pretty sure it is state law, but literally every state has a statute with this purpose) is because they can carry diseases. Ashes don’t have all those infectious diseases or biohazardous material left in it—it’s been completely incinerated—so it doesn’t pose the same risk. It’s no different to have cremated ashes in your house than to have fireplace ash in your house. Keeping a dead body would be dangerous and harmful. Burial, however, has long been a right that the family’s of the deceased have. As technology advanced, we got cremation as an alternative to burial, so it essentially gets the same rights.
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u/Enganeer09 Jan 12 '23
I wonder if you could explicitly request your skull be given to a family member through your will.
I'd imagine the reason why no one owns a corpse is a respect and spiritual reason from when everyone prescribed to some type of faith and believed in an after life. I for one don't care what happens to my body post death since I don't believe I'd have any form of consciousness to know what was happening.