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Would you use products with human materials as ingredients?

Health (523) Medicine (18) Human (3)

Photo: Music4thekids - Wikimedia Commons

Chinese traditional medicine still maintains the age-old practice of eating placenta. They believe this can perform miracles in improving health and vitality. While this idea might sound disturbing to some people, a scandal last year revealed an even more sickening view on this tradition: the consumption of pills containing what might have been dried flesh.

The use of human material is not limited in medicine, though. There have been words of some skin-care cosmetics using real human extracts as ingredients. Many people still believe in the supposedly admirable effects of these products.

So, what do you think? Would you use such a product?

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Top Answers

Honestly, even if you encapsulate them, consuming human materials is still cannibalism. Besides, while I don't object to eating your own placenta, I am not sure if using products that contain other people's DNA has any undesirable consequences.

by annep

I can't see any reason why eating something with someone else's DNA would be harmful (well, not because of the DNA). Wouldn't all food contain DNA from whatever plant or animal it used to be? It gets digested and used for energy or excreted. It's not as if foreign DNA is able to somehow colonise your body through your food.

by Jennifer Muirhead

Human flesh is definitely different from plant. And there is no proof that there is no diseases passing by the use of these stuffs. I'm not sure of the pills but I've heard of a skin serum made from umbilical cord blood that is supposed to help heal even scratches or scars, leaving perfectly smooth skin (It has a light purple colour and needs to be refrigerated). I don't believe that your body will digest the foreign substances if you apply directly on your wounds.

by annep

I didn't say you couldn't get diseases from this stuff. I said that you wouldn't end up with the DNA of the person or thing it came from (and you wouldn't, whether it's digested or rubbed on a wound). That's a very different thing.

by Jennifer Muirhead

Not knowingly, and hopefully not by accident. Babies' foreskins are sometimes used in skin care products. A lot of people don't look too carefully at what's in the stuff they put on their skin.

I have eaten some of my own placenta, and that was gross enough, but eating someone elses? Ick! And grossness aside, there's the question of what these pills with human flesh in is supposed to do and whether it's ever been proven to be effective, as well as proven not to be harmful.

by Jennifer Muirhead

No way. Perhaps the health benefits are real,
but what about the side-effects? Would there
be a guarantee that every single "donor" of
these products is totally disease free?
No thanks!

by Sarah Bell