The Development of Standards for the Ethical Use of Human Skeletal Remains for Education, Research, and Training in Forensic Anthropology

We present a proposed standard regarding the use of contemporary human skeletal remains in education, training, and research contexts in forensic anthropology. This document was generated by the Anthropology subcommittee of the Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science and is currently under review for publication by the American Academy of Forensic Sciences’, Academy Standards Board as a joint venture. The OSAC is federally funded and charged with drafting standards documents for various aspects of forensic science in the United States, while the ASB is an accredited Standards Development Organization which reviews and publishes proposed standards documents. The use of real human skeletal remains is crucial for students to learn how to identify human remains and develop various competencies as part of their education and training on their path to becoming professionals; they are also required for research. However, many recent transgressions have highlighted the need for the standardization of practices for the ethical treatment of human remains. We argue that the foundations of the ethical treatment of human remains are: informed consent, deathcare, and service to communities. This document provides a framework for informed consent based on the remains’ origin (donated, unclaimed, or unidentified) and how obtained permissions dictate the ethical use of human remains from different contexts. Guidance is also provided for the use of information associated with remains (e.g., images, measurements), data associated with the remains, and their final disposition.