Tyler Durden Says....

This macabre story has been making the rounds this weekend:

A gang in the remote Peruvian jungle has been killing people for their fat, police charged Thursday, draining it from their corpses and offering it on the black market for use in cosmetics. Medical experts expressed skepticism that a major market for fat might exist.

Three suspects have confessed to killing five people for their fat, said Col. Jorge Mejia, chief of Peru's anti-kidnapping police. He said the suspects, two of whom were arrested carrying bottles of liquid fat, told police it was worth $60,000 a gallon ($15,000 a liter).

Mejia said the suspects told police the fat was sold to intermediaries in Lima, the Peruvian capital. While police suspect the fat was sold to cosmetic companies in Europe, he could not confirm any sales.

It only gets weirder after that: 6 of the gang members are still at large; there have been 60 people gone missing in the province this year (the article highlights that the province is also home to drug-trafficking leftist rebels, but I'm not sure if kidnappings are a common practice of that group, or this is convenient scapegoating-by-association).

Really, there's not much one can say to this, though. It's just strange, disturbing, and macabre functioning of the capitalist economy and the commodification of just about everything, I guess.