For centuries, museums and universities have quietly stored, studied, and displayed human remains, many obtained without consent, like the 19th-century Viennese anatomist Joseph Hyrtl, who built his famous collection by paying grave robbers. The 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act tried to address this by requiring institutions to return remains to descendants or tribes, but progress has been slow and controversies keep surfacing, including the 2021 revelation that the University of Pennsylvania held remains from the 1985 MOVE bombing and used them in anatomy classes. Biological anthropologist Fatimah Jackson is now pushing universities and museums to confront this history and manage remains more ethically. Meanwhile, modern medical schools increasingly rely on voluntary body donation, some even holding ceremonies to honor donors, a stark contrast to Hyrtl’s era.
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