From The Guardian, a touch­ing human-interest story:

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.

He sug­gested that the use of skin and other tis­sues har­vested from exe­cuted pris­on­ers was not uncom­mon. “In China it is con­sid­ered very nor­mal and I was very shocked that west­ern coun­tries can make such a big fuss about this,” he said. Speak­ing from his office in north­ern China, he added: “The gov­ern­ment has put some pres­sure on all the med­ical facil­i­ties to keep this type of work in low profile.”

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.”

95% cheaper? God bless Every­day Low Prices!