Do Elites Have a Taste for Human Organs?

Snow White's Warning

Zerohedge.com recently published an article about organ harvesting in China. Wealthy people in need of a kidney, for example, might order such organs “freshly delivered” from political enemies, such as members of the Falun Gong, who would be killed for this purpose.

Now, wait a minute! The article may be pure NATO propaganda. It may be some other kind of fiction. Or it may be one doctor’s truthful testimony. I cannot judge the veracity. But I do know this: Wherever organs may be harvested from donors, such as from dying soldiers on any battlefield around the world, they may also end up as delicacies on someone’s dining table.

And that brings me to the original Snow White story by the Brothers Grimm. In their original story, namely the one of 1812, the Evil Queen is really Snow White’s mother, and she fancies herself eating her daughter’s organs if the huntsman were successful at killing her. The 1937 Disney adaptation for the big screen still references the Evil Queen’s desire to eat Snow White’s heart.

That specific focus on elites eating human organs wins my attention. Is there any particular reason why, in old European folk tales, powerful elites might be depicted as cannibals, as devourers of human organs? As predators of human prey? In other words, Do such “fairytales” (rather, folk stories) contain warnings from the past for future audiences?

For us, ordinary humans, rumors of aristocrats hunting humans in private forests, or eating human organs, or drinking baby blood, are just that: rumors. But apparently, such rumors also found their way into the collective memory of European fairytales and folk stories, retold from father to son, from grandmother to granddaughter.

It makes me wonder if we should heed the warnings.