US:There was a sense of expectation at the home of Frank and Ludivine Larmande in Cascade Township, Michigan, recently, writes Ed Pilkingtonin New York.
Two packages arrived which they thought would be parts of the dining table they had bought on eBay - but as the bubble wrap came off, they uncovered something they certainly hadn't bargained for.
"My husband started to unwrap one and said, 'This is strange, it looks like a liver'," Ms Larmande told the Grand Rapids Press. "He started the second one, but stopped as soon as we saw the ear. Something wasn't right."
Her point was made with admirable understatement because, indeed, something was not right. Instead of an auctioned table, the Larmandes had received human body parts which had been culled from corpses in China and plastinated - a process that preserves the organs in coating for use in museums and for educational purposes.
Police believe the delivery had gone astray having been intended for a laboratory in northern Michigan which prepares specimens for medical research and testing.
Investigators fear that this is not the end of the story. They think that as many as 28 other body parts, from limbs to glands, are making their way to other erroneous addresses around the state. An alert has been put out to police agencies.
A spokesperson for DHL, the delivery company concerned, said it was investigating whether it should have shipped the body parts and how the items were dispersed.
Plastination is an increasingly popular technique for medical education and for museum displays, having been pioneered by Gunther von Hagens when he at the university of Heidelberg in 1978. The technique involves the body being embalmed in formaldehyde before being coated in resin. - (Guardian service)