To consider the lengths we go to to find acne cures is to take us in the direction of the latest skin care efforts.  I hate to have to report on what I just read about, but it all comes with the territory of researching skin care and acne cures and the like:  there is a cosmetics firm in China (which sells to Europe) that is using dead skin to develop beauty products.  Maybe this is not all that remarkable, but the company is using the skin of those who died by execution.  The cosmetics firm reportedly uses the skin of “condemned convicts” who have been shot in their developing of products such as lip collagen treatments and wrinkle treatments.

Some of their products have already been circulated, evidently, having been exported to England.  When challenged, company heads respond that this practice is “traditional”, says a writer for LBN (Levine Breaking News).  They also say that there is “nothing to ‘make such a big fuss about.’”  But as the same writer tells it, there are ethical concerns for those developing and then for those using the products.  As well, the reporter notes that there is “potential risk of infection” for those indulging in the “harvested” skin care products.

Maybe the company and others like it have no qualms about ethics or health.  Maybe the same have nothing to do with acne cures.  Then again, maybe the offenders are ushering in the Soylent Green era, using the flesh of the dead for gain.  Possibly, they are bringing on a new wave of illnesses or diseases.  What concerns us should therefore be what goes into all our youth recouping, our beauty regimes, our acne cures.

Yes, when we have the frustrating external flaws of acne—whether we are teens or twenty-somethings or pregnant mothers or stressed out fathers—we are inclined toward extreme solutions.  We will go to great lengths to normalize, to clear up skin and fit in with the beautiful people, the unscathed, the oil-free.  We will try the OTC (over-the-counter) acne cures, will resort to homemade acne cures, will suffer ourselves to the experimental acne cures of the innovations of science and medicine.  Hell, when I was a teenager with insufferable zits galore, I succumbed to the “latest” acne cures, using strengths of Tetracycline that could cure twenty strep viruses at once, using lemons and vinegar and scrubs with sand in them (it felt like), and using what the doctor prescribed before it was fully tested: Retin-A, a solution we mixed with straight Vodka and burned away layers of dermis with.

But I am concerned and curious as to what I would do today if someone offered me acne cures in a bottle or jar that had on its ingredients list an item too closely resembling the dead skin of a criminal’s ass.  Okay, so we forego the ethics, and we let go of the “silly” fuss over health issues.  What about the cosmic passing of an evil soul or an unjustly convicted, condemned, and executed woman or man by way of her or his skin through our pores? Although that doesn’t sound remotely possible, still it’s revolting to be applying product of dead human skin on yourself.