A TikTok bone salesman's wall of spines reignites ethical debate over selling human remains [View all]

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Human skulls line his shelves. Spines hang on a wall in his showroom, more than 100 backbones from unknown people gathered in perpetual show. They all but certainly never knew one another.

Jon Pichaya Ferry, known on TikTok as JonsBones, is a 21-year-old bone salesman. Ferry’s account, where he has garnered nearly 500,000 followers and 22 million likes, features videos where he cheerily answers viewers’ questions on what many see as a macabre field. He also displays his rarest finds, including the skulls of fetuses and toddlers. His cat, Chonk, makes frequent appearances, and fans can even buy JonsBones merchandise.

The reach TikTok has afforded Ferry — introducing the bones trade to a whole new audience of younger people — has also invited sharp backlash to his business and its moral implications. Other TikTok users have made videos questioning the legality and ethics of the human remains trade, which Ferry maintains he participates in for educational purposes.

Experts say buyers of human bones often do not look at them as educational tools; instead the bones are sometimes turned into jewelry, chandeliers

The last several years have seen a larger reckoning around the bones trade, as museums have begun announcing where the skeletons in their collections came from.

“The poorer you are, the more powerless you are, the further down the pecking order you are, the greater the likelihood that it’s your people that can end up being collected like this,” said Shawn Graham, a professor of digital humanities at Carleton University in Canada.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2021/10/09/tiktok-jonsbones-human-remains-wall-spines/