Entire Peruvian Nation Now On Master Cleanse

You're looking at about 3.6 million pounds...sterling!

No matter what the fashion, cosmetics, and film industries say, there is new and undeniable evidence that fat people ARE worth something these days.

And it is turning them into walking targets:

LIMA, Peru — 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 Castillejos confessed that the gang would cut off its victims' heads, arms and legs, remove the organs, then suspend the torsos from hooks above candles that warmed the flesh as the fat dripped into tubs below.

Six members of the gang remain at large, Mejia said, adding that in addition to the five killings the suspects confessed to, the gang may be involved in dozens more. Castillejos told police that the band's fugitive leader, 56-year-old Hilario Cudena, has been killing to extract fat from victims for more than three decades.

At least 60 people are listed as missing in Huanuco province, where the gang allegedly operated, this year alone, though the province is also home to drug-trafficking leftist rebels.

Mejia said police received a tip four months ago that human fat from the jungle was being sold in Lima. In August, he said, police infiltrated the band and later obtained some of the amber fluid, which a police lab confirmed as human fat.

...Police named the band the "Pishtacos" after a Peruvian myth dating to pre-Columbian times of men who killed to extract human fat, quartering their victims with machetes.

Mejia said Castillejos claimed his was not the only gang engaged in such killings.

...Dr. Adam Katz, a professor of plastic surgery at the University of Virginia medical school, was incredulous when told about the Peruvian ring.

"I can't see why there would be a black market for fat," he said. "It doesn't make any sense at all because in most countries we can get fat so readily and in such amounts from people who are willing and ready to donate that I don't see why there would ever be a black market for fat, of all tissues." (read full article here)

Whether or not the existence of a black market for human fat should exist is irrelevant--it seems unlikely that these gang members would go through all that disgusting butchery/rendering for no reason, so they MUST be selling that fat to somebody for something.

Can it really be that hard to figure out whom? Or are the culprits too well-connected to face consequences? If this is all part of another risky Wall Street investment scheme, I swear I'm gonna...wait a minute--this could be just the miracle cure we've been looking for all this time!

Considering the favorable trade-off between liposuction costs and black-market fat prices--especially once costs go down as the number of procedures skyrockets--there might be some real money to be made here, America!

Maybe if 'the powers that be' were to turn our abundant fat reserves into a tradeable commodity and create a Cellulite Czar to control the flow to the marketplace--in order to keep prices high through manufactured scarcity, like DeBeers has perfected with diamonds--the Great Depression Redux might finally become a blip in our rearview mirror and America can proudly stand atop the world once more, stomping our rivals to dust as we laugh our way to the bank and increase consumption to even more grotesque levels.

Ahhh--a return to the good ole days would be nice...

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