{{Officials scrambled Tuesday to get 18 human heads off to their final destination, a crematorium, after they were seized by US customs inspectors before Christmas at Chicago\u2018s main O\u2019Hare airport.}}<\/p>\n
The heads, each tagged with a name plus place and cause of death, had originated in the United States for use at a research facility in Rome, spokeswoman Mary Paleologos of the Cook County medical examiner\u2018s office said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe heads were anatomical specimens used for research, properly preserved, wrapped and labeled when they arrived\u201d back on US soil as regular cargo in three sealed containers on a Lufthansa flight for final disposal.<\/p>\n
But as the embalmed heads passed through an X-ray machine at O\u2019Hare, one of the busiest airports in the United States, they were confiscated by customs agents who determined the accompanying paperwork was unclear.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, they\u2018re getting the paperwork cleared up\u201d to enable the heads to proceed to their final destination, a cremation service in the Chicago area, Paleologos told AFP.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, the heads remain in storage at the Cook County morgue.<\/p>\n
Paleologos was unable to identify the research facility in Rome.<\/p>\n
The United States, where human remains can be willed to science, is a major center in a growing international trade in body parts used for medical research. <\/p>\n
AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Officials scrambled Tuesday to get 18 human heads off to their final destination, a crematorium, after they were seized by US customs inspectors before Christmas at Chicago\u2018s main O\u2019Hare airport.}} The heads, each tagged with a name plus place and cause of death, had originated in the United States for use at a research facility […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-5233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5233"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=5233"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=5233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}