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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?"
Want to own your own home instead of leeching one off the taxpayer? Apply inside. $250,000 could be yours.
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
I honestly don't get the big deal with this. Now myself I am religious, but when I'm dead. I'm dead. And unless we figure out how to freeze people then revive them, this doesn't seem like a big deal. You get your grave for people to remember you, and your organs are put to good use. Seems like a fair trade to me.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
Organleggers will exist until we develop proper organ cloning. The moral dilemma over cloning and stem cell research will hamper any progress in this area and allow the organleggers to continue, much like the drug trade has.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
In his Gil "The Arm" Hamilton stories (collected in Flatlander ) Larry Niven speculated that once organ transplants were common, the government would end up making everything, even jaywalking, merit the death penalty to insure a good supply of organs. China has already started using organs from executed prisoners, how long before it spreads to India and even the West?
"Now, who says I'm worth more alive than dead?"
It depends... do you know the secret combination to a safe holding multibilion dollar amounts and are susceptible of talking under... preemptive advice?
Onda Technology Institute
How much is my left little finger worth?
Don't get the wrong idea, I'm quite attached to it.
So you'll have to prise it from my cold dead hands (or over my dead body)...
Oh wait...
A recent staple of science fiction is the story of people optioning their body parts for money while they're still living (companies pay you based on the value of said parts and the odds that your body will still be intact at death and not crushed in a car accident or something). Personally, I think this is not so unlikely as many science fiction scenarios. After all, about the only thing standing in the way are medical ethics regulations, and when times get tight, you can bet that corruption will put a stop to those.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
'Thats why I dont sign my doner card. When you get into an accident and the abulance comes, and they see you have that card. Do you honestly think they are there to help you?? Hell no, they are looking for spare parts.' Or even better. knock.knock: Door opens. "Yes, can I help you??" 'Are yu such and such' 'Yes I am'. "We're here for you liver." ;)
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
How about this very recent article, also from BBC. The crime they describe is blood donations (for cash) from a farm of living people.
This is not my sig
This happened to Alistair Cooke's body.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alistair_Cooke#Later_Life_and_Death
I've got a middle finger that I would gladly give George W. Bush for free.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"My cousin went to school with a guy that this happened to."
Are you sure it wasn't your cousin's mother's sister's uncle?
PLEASE don't tell my wife!
Fry: Now that you mention it, I do have trouble breathing underwater sometimes. I'll take the gills.
Shady organ dealer: Yes, gills. Then, uh, you don't need lungs anymore, is right?
Fry: Can't imagine why I would.
Shady organ dealer: Lie down on table. I take lungs now, gills come next week.
You forgot to mention that he woke up in a tub full of ice.
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,
Yup, you're worth a lot of money dead. To everyone but you. Imagine if _you_ had the right to decide to sell your corpse for a profit, the good you could do: You could leave that money to your family, donate it to charities. You could also do wonders to eliminate the organ donor waiting list -- if, presumably, you could directly sell your organs to folks willing to pay for them.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
It is officially now a race to produce a link to Snopes discussing kidney thieves.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Has anyone EVER asserted that Taco was worth more than a quarter of a million? Anyone? Anyone?
I didn't think so.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Now I have to change my will.
Let's see:
Organ donor card? check.
Sunday NY times? check.
1994 jeep cherokee? check.
road map of my nations capitol with dump sites marked? check.
All right, I'm ready for the end, when it comes.
"I'm not affraid of dieing. Ijust don't want to be there when it happens."
-- Sig under construction...
As long as my head can be kept alive in a jar....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Oh man, tell me about it. My aunt's second cousin's dog's sister's father's owner's grandmother's great grand-niece's former roomate was kidnapped by aliens, but then the aliens were spaceship-jacked by a bunch of street thugs before they could even get the anal probe in all the way. She was taken to a secluded shack in Montana where Jimmy Hoffa came out with a rusty scalpel and a copy of "Home Surgery for Dummies". Luckily, a Sasquatch riding on a Chupacabra broke in just in the nick of time and took her off to his treehouse high up in the Rockies. After a few months, though, he kicked her out because apparently she was supposed to be paying half of the rent or something, and she ended up wandering around the forest for several days until she passed out. Anyway, she came to in a back-alley surgery, and there was a big guy in dirty scrubs negotiating with the zombie Jeffrey Dahmer over who got what part of her body. Luckily, she managed to break free, but as soon as she got out the door she was picked up by federal agents who flew her off to Area 51 in a black helicopter and locked her in a closet with some freaky squid looking thing from some planet in the vicinity of Alpha Centauri (or so he claimed). He was just setting out the silverware so he could devour her in a more civilized fashion when a bunch of those weird guys who like to look at Area 51 all day with binoculars in order to find government conspiracies broke in and whisked her off. Unfortunately, they were short on meth and had no cash, but they did have the phone number for the Harvard Medical School, so they knocked her out, and she came to a few days later in the middle of the 405 freeway in a tub of ice.
Anyway, to make a long story short, she was missing three fingers, her left kneecap, three and a half yards of small intestine, three quarters of her right lung, and her spleen. Really scary stuff.
Think I'll let somebody sell my organs without giving me a fair cut of the profits?
OVER MY DEAD BODY!!!
Move all sig!
"Stiff" by Mary Roach. Goes into extensive detail about just how many uses dead bodies have. A few: forensics (letting them decay and recording what sorts of insects colonize them and when, which gives immense amounts of data to people who are trying to analyze time-of-death, also covered extensively in "A Fly For The Prosecution" by Madison Goff, and other books.
Safety testing: putting corpses in cars and crashing them gives much better results on skull fractures and such than Buster The Dummy. Likewise, dropping corpses in elevators or off buildings into safety nets, or measuring the protective qualities of bullet-proof jackets. It's hard to get good results using pigs.
(I saw Mary Roach read from this book one time, and it was creepy, not because of her and the book, but because just about everyone in the audience ended up asking really detailed, scary questions about treatment of dead bodies, since apparently most of them had experience in the subject.)
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Something which is not very well known but probably is an instance of one of the largest violation of human rights and illegal harvesting and sale of human body parts, and which are healthy and normal body parts that are being illegally and unethically removed from the bodies of millions of children every year is circumcision. Foreskins, which are a normal and healthy part of the human body and for which there is no justifiable or medically sound and valid rationale for removing a normal and healthy part of the human body that has no medical diseases whatsoever, are harvested from young children, and then are sold to corporations, including pharmacuetical companies, where they are used to manufacture cosmetics and for testing. SkinMedica is one such product which is made from foreskin fibroblasts, and which has been promoted by Oprah Winfrey, who apparently is aware that a major component of the product is human neonatal foreskins stolen from genitally mutilated boys. Ironically, Oprah's show in the past has decried female circumcision. I suppose from Oprah's point of view, the genital mutilation and destruction of parts of boys anatomy is acceptable, this is only unacceptable when done to girls, since apparently only girls deserve to be protected from demeaning, dehumanising genital mutilations, torture and assault. Apparently girls are entitled to more rights to a whole body than boys are.
If a person, as an adult, wants to be circumcised, male or female, they are free to make that choices for themselves, with fully informed consent. it should be the right of the person to make their own choices about removals of normal and undiseased parts of their bodies. It is a basic human right to physical integrity, and unless we uphold a medical standard and universal principle which requires an actual medical abnormality to be present on the part to removed from an unconsenting, this right is not being honoured and respected, and as well, we have no standard to define what is an assault. Any clear assault could be made permissable by society at its own whim, even if it is to the detriment of individual rights. Since circumcision cannot be undone and what is taken cannot be gotten back, the decision should be the person whose body it is, since only they will be able to decide what is best for them. Perhaps some men prefer to remain intact for aesthetic reasons or to retain full sensitivity. We should do what gives the individual the most freedom, since all rights and liberties are based in the individual. Parents do not have a right to do anything to their children and their responsibilities are to protect their children from harm. Children are not extensions of their parents bodies and children do have human rights which are seperate from the parents and are considered seperate, individual persons. Removing or destroying a healthy and undiseased part of a childs body is considered child abuse and it is an assault upon the child by definition , circumcision is a removal of a healthy and undiseased part of the childs body. Removals of parts of the body are permenant and cannot be undone later. A person can always change their beliefs later on, but they cannot undo damage to their body if they did not want this. Therefore, removal of normal parts of human anatomy should be deferred to a time when the person is of the age they can make with fully informed consent these decisions for themselves. The foreskin is a normal and healthy part of the human anatomy and has been a part of the anatomy of mammals and their predecessors for over 100 million years. All mammals have foreskins, including both males and females.
Of course we already know that male or female circumcision is an invalid and wrong genital mutilation of children, since it violates medical ethics. Everyone has a basic human right to a whole body, and to not have parts of their body removed without their consent unless there is a serious, critical, present and current medical condition on that part and where removing it is necessary to treat that medical ab