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Organs of UK Nuclear Workers Secretly Harvested; Energy Secretary Apologizes
fernlyn writes with word of a report detailing a decades-long practice of clandestine post-mortem organ removal from the bodies of dozens of workers in the UK's nuclear energy industry; Britain's Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has apologized to the families of those workers whose organs were taken without consent or even acknowledgement. Many of the organs taken were removed without any apparent forensic purpose in mind. Surviving relatives are understandably upset with what they see as cavalier treatment of their loved ones' bodies (even beyond unauthorized organ removal), such as the replacement of bones with lengths of broomstick.
What the hell is the fuss about. Has the UK suddenly taken to the ancient Egyptian religion or something. It makes no difference when your dead if your organs are in a jar, cremated, or rotting in the earth.
A dead body is only an empty shell(Klingon Death Ritual)
Do not underestimate the power of the Dark side
Anyone who has been remotely connected with the British civil service will understand that, unlike even the United States in an increasingly dwindling number of areas, there is no real sense of government serving the people. The government exists to manage the unwashed masses and knows what is good for you, even while every individual understands that the government is really serving itself. This notion of nanny leadership is even woven into the undergraduate experience at Oxford, where the nation's managers are bred (and probably Cambridge too): if you have any sense of egalitarianism, it is repulsive but difficult to ignore.
were replaced with lengths of broomstick?
you're dismembering people's corpses for no good fucking reason
stay classy, britain
It's one thing to not care what happens to your own body after death or to not hold any religious dogma to ones demise, it's another thing entirely to not respect anothers religious beliefs or desires. I often read how Christians and other religions are full of zealots that push their beliefs on others but I see just as many Atheists call them idiots for believing such things. Basically, I see the same pushing and forcing from both sides and it's disrespect regardless from which camp it comes from. I believe in a prime mover for a couple reasons, mostly cause i think it's nieve to believe that just because I cant perceive something with my 5 senses that it doesn't exist. I also believe that with technology comes the ability to perceive things we as a human race couldn't before. Germs are a good example of this. The other reason comes from the premise that mathematics was a discovery more than an invention. There was an invention by us humans within the concept of math, but that invention was the use of symbols to quantify something that inherently exists in the universe. I expect to be reamed by those who've been burned by religious constructs. Just remember, religion as an organization was a human invention that's run by humans and we're all flawed in some way therefore so are our creations. So how is it that the underlying principles that allow math to exist as a concept isn't flawed? Sure the concepts WE determine that exist within it can be, but that's OUR perception in practice..and we're flawed...
Yeah but crying about it & asking for 'sorry' changes nothing. The families involved should just sue their government for damages. That way any time a public servant steps on citizens' rights (and gets caught), there would be a significant pricetag attached. For a government that's low on funds, that might be a lot harder to ignore than a pile of damaging news reports.
And when possible those responsible should be kicked out of their jobs, perhaps even out of their profession.
Organs and bones are harvested (and bones replaced by lengths of broomstick or pvc pipe). Due care is taken for these organs and they're being used to save lives, which is arguably better than just throwing them away.
The dark side of the whole thing is that a corpse is worth roughly GBP 200k-300k in spare parts, so ethics are out of the window and organs are harvested without the consent of the deceased nor those who stayed behind.
As usual, money is the driving factor here, so there is something you can do to stop this practice if you have objections to it: Sign up as organ donor. If there are enough organ donors, the law of supply and demand will take care of the rest and make sure this practice is no longer profitable, so it will cease to exist.
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The argument that property rights transcend death requires the supposition that (a) it is the soul that is the human person rather than the body and (b) the human soul survives the death of the body.
There are other latent assumptions in there as well, such as the body being property of any sort. But, for the present discussion, I think the presupposition of imortality is the most interesting.
They just forgot to metion they are doing this for a good cause. The self esteem fund for girls!
The summary makes us think that "Many of the organs taken were removed without any apparent forensic purpose in mind."; In fact, "The organs were examined at Sellafield as part of research into the health effects of work in the industry"
As much as it was a cabal of ghoulish bodysnatchers with God complexes who thought they were above the law. You know, typical medics. 99.5% of them give the rest a bad name.
And I re-iterate my position: if criminal acts were performed, individuals should be prosecuted. If the relatives are going to sue anyone for anything (what? emotional distress?) then it should be the individuals, not the State. The State doesn't care if it has to rob Peter a bit more to hush up Paul.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
From TFA:
Ironically, had they been properly informed some would have agreed to the removal and analysis of the organs.
I would say yes, iIf someone asked me: "We think that staring at a computer screen reading Slashdot all day might be unhealthy. Would you mind if we grab a few of your organs when you die? This might lead us to better protection for Slashdot readers in the future." Harvesting organs without permission is just plain rude, crude and uncalled for. It's just not cricket; whatever happened to the image of the polite English gentleman?
Maybe they didn't ask because they were afraid that it would scare workers away, because of health safety concerns? But if the UK nuclear industry had doubts about health safety, the workers should have been informed about that, as well.
What other shenanigans are going on, which haven't been discovered yet . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Wait, were you talking about medics, lawyers, or politicians there?
My property goes to my heirs at my death. My body is my property. Stealing bits of my body is stealing from my heirs. No mystical crap required.
If the government chooses to take my body at time of death then it's a tax or confiscation of property from the heirs but the government generally has to disclose taxes or confiscations.
Or: How about harvesting the Secretaries' liver, Monty Python style?
Nice use of the word 'harvesting' to set the mood.
Unless specified otherwise, in Belgium each person is a donor of his body parts after he or she dies.
Next of kin do not have to be forewarned that some or even all of the body is used as donor, but sometimes are.
So all bodies are 'harvested' by default.
I personally do not care what happens to my body after I died. It's not my problem anymore. Let people who care at that moment do whatever they feel will help them to mourn or celebrate.
I do like the 'harvest by default' idea, as long as it easy to opt out AND if opting out would mean that you would opt out of receiving any donor organ as well. You will NOT be placed on any list. This would give people who ARE willing to be donor a better chance of receiving in case of need.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
When did we start excusing governments and other authority figures from law? The US president is ordered to hand over emails, and he apologizes and "loses" them. The Catholic church is accused of covering up years of sexual child abuse, and the Pope apologizes. The British government steals organs and desecrates corpses, and someone apologizes.
How about giving these people the same consequences as if it was one of us "normal" people doing these acts? Are you trying to imply that we wouldn't have the full weight of the law fall on us? Are you saying we could get away with just saying "I'm sorry?". This has to stop, it's the path to despotism.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
how sad, human body should be respected at all times. http://www.lifestand.com/
What?! I thought these things only happen in EVIL China??? Seems like China is just playing catch up to the western world, again.
Where is the live organ donation sketch? Oh wait he actually checked it off on a card in that sketch. I find this area of the law (dealing with dead people) to be exceedingly odd.
The term harvesting when applied to organs usually refers to them being transplanted into other people (who may be paying for them) However this does not seem to be the case here. If you needed a new organ, would you want one that used to be in a nuclear plant worker?
If you pissed in the casket without us SEEING and SMELLING it, then the casket being buried, and it turns out later you indeed pissed in it, I would not care. You are welcome to do it on a rotten piece of meat. My mother once dead will be the summation of all memory I have from her, not the corpse.
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no they found out about the nuclear Frankenstein that was being made.
We're sorry... Soooo. Sorrry...
At BP we're committed to environmental protection. That's why we're drilling even deeper than before, right to the bowels of hell to release Cuthulu.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Actually, Slavery is still legal, depending upon where you live.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
...how chianti sales are going in the UK
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
And elsewhere in the article, I can see no other actual dates. Four decades looks like a bit of a stretch as does the magnitude of the story. The thief/scientist that initiated and carried out most of the autopsies is long since dead.
"such as the replacement of bones with lengths of broomstick."
Did...did they really think no one would notice?
C'mon man, at least put some cheap plastic bones in there, you can find them at any convenience store around Halloween.
While I think the method of harvesting the organs is open to lots of criticism, I think they could prove quite useful in the future (if they or samples of them have been preserved).
Both X-rays [1], neutrons and heavy ions at high velocity damage DNA and can induce DNA double strand breaks. DNA double strand breaks, courtesy of the WRN and DCLRE1C (Artemis) genes are *not* repaired reliably. They allow genome corruption to creep into the genome of each cell. This in turn can induce cancer or its lesser cousin "aging" (when the damage accumulates in genes which are not oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes).
One would suspect that nuclear industry workers are exposed to higher levels of X-rays, neutrons and heavy ions (why else would they be required to wear radiation monitoring badges?). The same is true to some extent for astronauts and to a lesser extent pilots and frequent flyers. And then of course there is your dentist and your local hospital. And don't forget about the TSA (at least as far as the X-rays go). To my knowledge there is no "safe" level of X-rays -- there are just greater or lesser amounts of damage & probable mutations caused.
Genome sequencing is now becoming cheap enough that the tissues of these workers may have their genomes sequenced. If correlated with their lifetime radiation exposures one could then determine relative risks more completely than is now the case. Relative risk determination generally involves a lot of hand-waving regarding radiation dose and type which are generally extrapolated from high dose exposures (atomic bomb blasts) or animals which have different DNA repair capabilities compared with humans. So the children or grandchildren of these individuals may yet benefit from their unapproved contribution to medicine.
To not be an organ donor to me is the ultimate form of selfishness. You have no need for your organs after you die, and yet you are actively preventing them from being used to save someone else's life.
These were church organs, right? What? OK, give Gregg Allman a call..
So not all of your loved one's dead body went to feed the worms. Some of it went to a useful purpose. This bothers you how? If you really have a superstition about a rotting corpse in the ground serving a purpose which can only be served if it is absolutely whole (until time's ravages make it just a collection of bones, that is), yours is a sad life in the abstract, but I'm moving on. If you merely want to deprive science and medicine, BURN THE DAMN THING WHEN IT DIES! It's not a person any more.
Just as no one is allowed to own a living human being, no one should be allowed a say in what happens to a dead corpse. Now, if the departed himself left wishes that he be cremated, I would honor that request, but that's it.
Sheesh.
You're an idiot. I have worked with a lot of doctors. Most doctors care very much for people, don't think they are above the law and do not have God complex. Now, sometime morons confuse confidence and knowledge as 'god complex' but that is those morons problems, not the doctors.
Yes, if the law was broken, some punishment should be dealt. Sadly, it's hard to find the actual culprit. For example: What if the person had been told they had permission? how far can you chase that chain? It can get very diffuse quickly.
Sadly, for most people this is what they have heard:
"My dads body was secretly harvested?:" cha-ching! "that terrible" cha-chinng "I am emotionally" cha-ching " traumatized."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Is your friend an undergraduate or graduate student? I'd lay a small wager that it is the former in your case.
The undergraduate degree I read over a decade ago (BA in Computation - anywhere else this would be a BSc in Computer Science) was indeed a very mediocre course (and there were only two lecturers that were any good, though most of my tutors - those who conducted tutorials consisting of two students at a time - were very good); but to be perfectly honest most undergraduate programmes in CS in existence are rather mediocre (I can't speak for other disciplines).
The key thing is the quality of research undertaken in the University - this is certainly world-class in most disciplines (which impacts those reading higher degrees by research). This probably won't impact you much if you were reading an undergraduate degree, though.
I can't agree that the "majority of students who go there are considered 'mediocre'," though. The vast majority of people I knew (which is significantly more than your one friend) were intelligent and articulate. This is what tends to happen when you have a selection system which requires applicants to hold extremely high academic grades (three A grades at UK A-level, or if you are from the US a score of 2,100/2,400 in the SAT reasoning test or an ACT score of 32/36), and then go through an interview-based selection.
Unsure about overseas, but "Scope of Employment" should _always_ be considered. Otherwise, "go dump that toxic sludge in the lake or you are fired" comes back to haunt us.
Given the lack of consent in the gathering of the organs, my question now is whether the research data gathered is now invalidated. Generally, data gathered through unethical means cannot be used in research papers that hope to see the light of day in peer reviewed journals. So you won't see any published papers based on the findings from experiments done on concentration camp prisoners during WWII, for example. Similarly, if there have been papers published based on data from this nonconsensual organ gathering, I think they would have to be pulled and the authors censured.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
My property goes to my heirs at my death. My body is my property.
Slavery is illegal. No-one else can own your body except you.
Correct on the former, totally incorrect on the latter.
In many places, your will should include leaving your remains to an heir, to ensure that your funeral wishes will be carried out.
If you don't leave your body to someone, in many jurisdictions it goes to the State.
You can also leave your remains to research, for example. You don't think all those cadavers that medical students disect still own themselves, do you?
Putting moderation advice in your
The radiated organs taste a lot better than regular ones.
Eddie! Get on the phone NOW before these stiffs whiff!
You're a child molester. Also, a terrorist. By the way, hello! I haven't "worked with a lot of doctors", but I have studied with them. Show me the student and I will show you the raving callous egomaniac who views mere humans as ugly bags of mostly water . Most of their training is obsolete by the time they learn it, let alone when they put it into practice, so any confidence they have is based on ignorance, not knowledge. To be fair though, it's only about 95% of them that are callous egomaniacs: the other 5% can very nearly pass for humans.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Why can't people just accept the fact that a dead body is a DEAD BODY. Once you've had a funeral, the carcass is a potentially valuable resource that should be used, not stuffed six feet under to rot.http://news.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=story&sid=10/11/17/0441202#