One of my husband’s high school friends had a human placenta in his freezer. Neatly wrapped and labelled in a Ziploc plastic bag, it lay in among the chicken thighs and ice-cream cartons. The placenta was his mother’s, or rather his younger brother’s – I am not sure what the etiquette is for attributing ownership of a placenta – and the kids would go down to the basement to root it out, hold it up and laugh: “Watch out next time Eric’s mom serves up beef casserole!”
In fact, Eric’s parents had no intention of cooking up the placenta. They had meant to plant it under a tree in the garden to commemorate their youngest son’s birth but never got around to it. Which rather neatly sums up the history of cannibalism: it’s an irresistible story, all the more horrific because eating human flesh is something any of us might, in extremis, be forced to do, or could, in theory, do without even realising; but the stories have long been more compelling than the actual evidence.
Eating human flesh is something any of us might, in extremis, be forced to do, or could do without even realising
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