Cadaver Fat Filler & The Ethics of Necrocosmetics

The next installment of Ask Ugly, my monthly beauty advice column for the Guardian, is here! Hi Ugly, I recently became aware of new cosmetic injectables derived from cadaver fat – as in, made of dead people. Apparently the fat is harvested from organ and tissue donors and used for procedures like Brazilian butt lifts and boob jobs. What is this? How is it legal? Even if it is legal, how is it ethical? – The Beauty Industry Is Killing Me A half dozen dead, devastatingly gorgeous bodies float, naked, in 10ft-tall test tubes. They’re preserved. Perfect. Ready. “Calling them donors is crass,” a plastic surgeon says. “I call them epidermis angels: beautiful people who left the earth far too soon, and who were so generous as to pass along their good fortune to others.” Soon, the surgeon will harvest their parts – smooth skin, symmetrical faces, asses with just the right amount of fat – and transplant them onto the living. Beauty, he says, should never be “wasted on the dead”. When this scene from FX’s sci-fi series The Beauty aired in January, it already felt dated. Real-world cosmetic doctors had been injecting patients with AlloClae, a filler made from donated human cadaver fat, for over a year. This is probably the macabre material you’ve been hearing about. Recent headlines include “I Got My BBL From A Cadaver” and “Back(side) from the dead!”. But while AlloClae has ignited a fresh cycle of disgust and debate over what I’ll call necrocosmetics, the category isn’t new. The aesthetics industry has long harvested “cadaveric materials from organ and tissue donors to reconstruct people”, says Dr Melissa Doft, a plastic surgeon based in New York. “We use skin grafts to help repair burns and for breast reconstructions. We use rib grafts to reconstruct noses.” A little over a decade ago, tissue bank MTF Biologics developed a method to repurpose donated human adipose tissue – AKA fat – which had previously been discarded after skin tissue collection. The injectable “allograft adipose matrix” treatment known as Renuva was born (or raised from the dead). The product can be used to plump cheeks, nasolabial folds, temples and cellulite dimples, and has the unique ability to merge with the recipient. “The body recognizes Renuva once you inject it,” explains Evi Chnari, the vice-president of R&D at MTF Biologics. “The patient’s own cells then convert it into their own fat.” Death, quite literally, becomes you. AlloClae, a Tiger Aesthetics product, functions similarly. Donor fat is purchased, processed and purified of genetic material. Since AlloClae includes lipid molecules and has a thicker consistency, it’s more suitable for use on the body: Brazilian butt lifts (BBLs), breast enhancements, hip dips. It’s possible to perform these procedures sans dead people, I should note. Hyaluronic acid fillers like Juvéderm and Restylane can add volume to the face. Autologous fat transfer, in which fat is removed from one area of the patient’s body via liposuction and reinjected into other areas, is another popular option. But beauty enthusiasts are increasingly opting to use human remains instead, mostly due to “filler fatigue” – traditional filler can cause problems such as puffiness and lymphatic issues – and the widespread use of GLP-1s. “People who are on Ozempic or are dieting heavily are really thin, and don’t have enough fat to transfer,” Doft says. “They want their legs and their belly to be skinny, but want their breasts to be fuller.” Where’s a patient to turn? A corpse, of course. “I thought everyone was going to get creeped out by it,” says Dr Haideh Hirmand, a plastic surgeon based in New York, but “less people than you’d think even care”. The creep-factor is apparently mitigated by convenience: Renuva and AlloClae don’t require downtime or anesthesia like fat transfers do, making the 30-minute lunch break boob job possible. (Thanks, donors!) And yup, this is legal. In the US, the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (UAGA) authorizes tissue banks to collect voluntary donations from the dead for use in transplants, research, education and more. (Lobbyists for “the multibillion-dollar body parts industry” helped rewrite the UAGA in 2006 to make it “easier for body parts to be harvested quickly”, according to the LA Times.) MTF Biologics and Tiger Aesthetics’ products are FDA-cleared for use in the US. Is it ethical, though? That’s a little harder to parse. The rest of my answer includes: a 200-person survey on the ethics of necrocosmetics (consent, profit, etc) how the beauty industry’s commodification of living bodies is and always has been built on the commodification of dead bodies insight from a bioethicist a framework for minimizing harm how necrocosmetics are affecting the donor registry and more! Click through to the Guardian to read the full article (and if you decide to share it with friends or on social media or whatever, please share it via the Guardian link).