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The Real Body Snatchers
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC are reporting on a grisly trade lying behind the booming business for replacement body parts in medical procedures. Many unscrupulous "dealers" will procure body parts from anyone willing to deal them — e.g., undertakers, medics — and will process them for resale onto legitimate companies. Apparently a fully processed cadaver can fetch up to $250,000. Now, who says I'm worth more alive than dead?"
Larry Niven coined the term "organlegger" to describe individuals who obtained and resold body parts through less than scrupulous means.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
The issue isn't that your body parts shouldn't be used to help someone else, the issue is that these folks were simply taking the parts, or the entire body, without the permission of either the deceased or their families. Essentially, they were grave robbers without the grave.
It comes down to consent. Think of it as an extended form or Opt-in. Unless you specifically say you want your parts to go to someone else, they stay with you.
Then of course there are the whole host of religious issues which don't need to be discussed but should be mentioned in relation to the above reason.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Personally I agree, but it's worth remembering that the term "religious" covers a whole lot of ground. While my own faith has no problem with stripping me for parts, rolling what's left up in a newspaper, and chucking it from the window of a speeding truck, someone else's beliefs may assign much more importance to leaving an intact corpse. Consent and proper procedure is important for this sort of thing.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
This happened to Alistair Cooke's body.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alistair_Cooke#Later_Life_and_Death
After that, of course, public objections to the death penalty drop since it's a source of spare parts. Eventually death becomes the standard penalty for any felony.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
It is officially now a race to produce a link to Snopes discussing kidney thieves.
More Twoson than Cupertino
There are plenty of uses that aren't transplants -- various medical research, and especially training of new doctors. Working with real cadavers is still important; you can't learn everything from books and you don't want to start on live patients for everything. How much those applications care about freezing is beyond me (I'm not a doctor), but I'm guessing it varies between "not at all" and "somewhat, but not nearly as much as transplants."
Having watched the BBC documentary, the bigger issue is that of the use of diseased or otherwise unsuitable bodies. For instance one guy they spoke to contracted Hepatitis from an illegally supplied transplant.
The grave robbers in this case stole parts from people who died of hepatitus, HIV, and other highly-contagious and deadly diseases. Setting aside concern for the family of the dead; think about the living who receive bone implants from an AIDS victim.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Actually, bodies do have rights. We have a lot of emotion tied up in these bags of meat that carry us around. Depending on the jurisdiction and country and what have you there is usually a law or two with names like 'inappropriate disposal of a body' or 'improper treatment of human remains' or, in this case, 'mutilating a dead body'. Mostly the laws get used to stop people form burying their relatives in the back yard or wherever.
I work in neuropathology and we always need more brains to work on. I'm guessing you're in the UK, so you could look up the 'brain bank' at the IOP in London and find out how to donate. Some people prefer to donate their brain rather than their body because then relatives still get to bury you within a reasonable time.
I was thinking of this guy who stole body parts from corpses, falsified documents, and then sold the parts for use as implants. The guy sold tissue that came from HIV and hepatitis victims, and sold bone tissue from corpses whose cancer had spread to their bones.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/