fyi, ‘thoroughly’ cremating does not reduce everything to ashes; bones also remain – ashes and bones are taken to be merged with ocean or holy river leading finally to sea. Whether someone is able to track its progress or not – it does not mean they dont care about their loved ones remains getting back to the elements without being intercepted. Surely, such a green concept is to be appreciated. Instead, your ‘logic’ is boderline offensive. Emotional implications of bone marketing are there as long as you have emotions.

1. China lacks the skills to prepare adequate skeletons. They are known internationally in transplantation of live tissues, and they can’t produce proper skeletons? Unlikely.
2. To avoid the “2000 rupee charge” people readily accept a perfunctory cremation. An isolated case (did you actually document the cases?) does not make a factory.
3. There’s a process to test the origin of the bones. There’s sufficient DNA for analysis. Did you have “received” skeletons in the US tested?
4. Why not try to procure some skeletons in the US and see the supply chain?
5. Medical schools in the US have processes in place; where’s the evidence of their malfeasance?

This article has the same tone as the sex-slave trafficking articles of a couple years ago… they have proven to be vastly blown out of proportion.

Nevertheless, your story is extremely interesting.

For people interested in checking my facts feel free to use Google. I would suggest keywords like “bone factory” and “india bones”, “reuters India bones” and “Osta International” and “The Bone Room”. I’ve already done my research, you can read about it in my article. Anyone else who wants to can check my facts.

I think narayan is really stretching by calling you a fabulist. However in the aftermath of the Scott Beauchamp and W. Thomas Smith controversies, where publications like TNR and the NRO have copped to the fact that their fact-checking process could do little to catch fabrications supplied by trusted correspondents abroad, saying that Wired has a fact-checking process doesn’t automatically allay people’s fears about the veracity of your reporting.

That being said, I don’t disagree with the content of the Wired story–just that haters like narayan would be more convincingly blown out of the water with a few links to supporting online resources for us lazy blog-readers to peruse (yes, read closely).

It would really be better if you had actually read the story in WIRED before writing such a lengthy comment attacking my credibility. You can find a link at the top of this thread.

If you had read the report you would notice that I not only met people who work in the bone factories in Calcutta, but saw huge caches of bones that were being prepared for export. You might also have read that I had contacted more than 30 medical schools in the united states and interviewed them about their bone procurement. You would have also learned that I spoke with every major bone supplier in the United States and found out where the bones came from.

If you were unusually preceptive you might have also noticed that I was talking about the skeleton trade, and not the cadaver trade. It’s a subtle distinction, but skeletons were supplied by India to the UK and USA. Cadavers were always harvested domestically. If you re-read the article and figure out why that is an important difference.

After reading the article, you might still have some qualms with what I wrote. In which case you should realize that every piece of writing in WIRED goes through two levels of fact checking where every sentence, and every word is followed up by a team of independent researchers. But I guess you could argue that they are all making this up too. In which case you are entitled to whatever opinion you want.

P.S. > Carney’s comments on this blog are vapid, speculative, unknowledgeable, unprincipled and unethical. To me at least, he has no credulity as a journalist. 11. “and a lot of other places in India, I’ve discovered recently” – unsubstantiated “people just go and dig up graves” – hyperbolic, a wild-ass claim “I don’t think that criminals should be protected” – childish 14 & 20 This is a journalist writing?! “puts some ghee in the body’s mouth and lights it on fire” – exaggeration 45. Highly speculative and illogical
“Everywhere else in the world people just put a headstone and then bury the body” – The man has an extremely limited knowledge of burial practices over the world including Christian countries. 52. How stupid can this get? Why bring Mother Teresa into it? Perhaps she was thinking of headstone tipping. Perhaps people go to Calcutta graveyards to make love, to defecate, to urinate, to masturbate; the possibilities are endless, but Carney uses her to bolster his story. 64. “domestic consumption” — surely you jest! Latinate idiocy. The second paragraph is all hearsay. 66. “what else can I say” — Nothing at all – not until you’ve read Jessica Mitford. 74. Dear Dr. Henry Gray : please don’t! You’ll be risking your reputation.