Legacy MattersThis is where some collagen comes from and it beggars comment. Nothing I could say could convey the breadth and depth of my disgust.
A special report from the Guardian The beauty products from skin of executed Chinese prisoners.
A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered.
Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is "traditional" and nothing to "make such a big fuss about".
--
The agent told the researcher: "A lot of the research is still carried out in the traditional manner using skin from the executed prisoner and aborted foetus." This material, he said, was being bought from "bio tech" companies based in the northern province of Heilongjiang, and was being developed elsewhere in China.
---
The agent said his company exported to the west via Hong Kong."We are still in the early days of selling these products, and clients from abroad are quite surprised that China can manufacture the same human collagen for less than 5% of what it costs in the west." Skin from prisoners used to be even less expensive, he said. "Nowadays there is a certain fee that has to be paid to the court."
Because collagen is injected under the skin, it's not a cosmetic. Yet, it's not a medical product or medicine. Until new regulations are drawn, such collagen remains perfectly legal in the U.K. and the E.U.
Apart from the enormous ethical concerns, there are health worries. Injected collagen could possibly spread hepatitis and variant CJD, the human form of mad cow disease.
It makes you wonder doesn't it, which celebrities have already been plumped up and with what.