Have you ever heard about it? Ever considered it? After reading this article, you will.
As a starter, there is this website named humanleather.com that apparently was producing and selling (and claims to eventually start again) products made of human leather.
According to them, they create this type of fabric, in a very ethical and legal way, from the skin of people who gave full consent to use their skins after their death.
We can’t entirely be sure if this is genuine or not, but the idea is clearly repulsive, isn’t it?
Could you picture yourself getting a bag or wearing a jacket made of the skin of another human being?
What if you knew who the Human Leather was from?
Now, if you think this would be the creepiest thing to read, what would you say if we told you that a project has created the concept of growing human leather in laboratories with the DNA of a person?
Would you think this is genius or freaking sick?
According to her website tinagorjanc.com/pure-human, Tina Gorjanc created this concept for her final master’s project. The idea was to grow a human leather fabric from DNA and not just any, she patented the concept to use the DNA from late designer Alexander McQueen.
Yes, you read it! How about that now? Would you be willing to wear a jacket made of your favorite designer’s DNA? Or even of a late member of your family?
Her concept was purely conceptual, she didn’t get to grow the leather from his DNA, but she did patent the idea and that was the actual point of the project: the concern of biological information protection.
Nobody told her it was illegal to collect found hair of the designer from old collections and transform it into the fabric. Now if nobody stopped her, a student, then who would stop any big corporation that would want to execute this idea if there is no legal regulation?
In the end, she made her collection using pig’s leather (to her point of view because it’s the closest to look like human skin), which brings this article’s point.
Human Leather vs Animal Leather
Firstly, the example of human leather was created with the consent of actual humans. But would their consent morally approve their skin use, without creating any kind of repulsion?
And if you disagree and still feel the repulsion of using another human’ skin just for fashion, what about using another living being’ skin? You know, the animals for instance?
Why would you feel incredibly disgusted by this creepy idea of wearing the skin of another person but not the skin of an animal?
And secondly, the example of the project focusing on the concerns of not having any legal rights to stop anyone from exploiting the DNA of human beings, in whatever way any company would like to.
Isn’t this ironic and more like very unfair to be concerned about it when it is what the whole animal industry is all about? The exploitation of animals just for our own pleasure, this big industry doesn’t care much about legal and morals, right?
Where are the laws against it? And more importantly who is fighting to get them? The animals can’t, because they can’t speak. They, unfortunately, can’t shout out in any human language, and just because they are not able to phonetically give out consent, then it’s ok to take it?
In those two examples human rights are an absolute necessity but why should we ignore animal rights?
So, ask yourself this very important question, why do we think is creepy, wrong and it should be illegal to use the skin of a human, but it is completely normal to use the skin of an animal? What is the difference? Culture? Habits? History? Religion? The food chain?
We as humans are the kings of the world? Yes, yes, we all heard all of that before, but take all those excuses away and what do we get? Nothing but the fact that animals should have as many rights as humans do.
