Should people surrender their mortal remains?

[Lagmonster]

I recently read an article in the Economist about the purported 'shortage of donations of corpses to medical research', and the better-known low turnout of organ donors.

How many of you would hypothetically support a system whereby a government agency took possession of one's mortal remains after death? The idea being that 1) useable organs would be salvaged as abruptly as possible following death, 2) bodies not useable for salvage would be donated as research cadavers, and then 3) anything leftover from that would be recycled (currently, some crematoriums in northern Europe may divert heat to buildings or other structures such as public pools). All of which could be supported by an opt-out program, presumably, for those few who absolutely have to have some specific ritual performed with their corpse.

Frankly, I look at graveyards and think of them as a terrible waste - and at a shortage of cadavers and organ donors as a goddamned tragedy.

[Borgholio]

It makes my skin crawl, but I cannot deny that eventually, we'll run out of places to bury our dead...leaving cremation. And from a purely practical standpoint, if one person's death can save the lives of 5 or 6 other people, then why shouldn't the corpse be used instead of wasted?

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not disputing the point about the merits of organ donation, except to note that a lot of people's organs are in poor condition at the time of their death.

As a nitpick: we are very unlikely to run out of places to bury our dead unless we are too careful for our own good, because as a practical matter cemeteries aren't necessarily entirely permanent. Grave spaces are sometimes reused, and this was a quite common practice for much of history, if only because nobody really cares nowadays what happens to the remains of the average Joe who died in 1850.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I certainly think that organ donation should be opt-out rather than opt-in, but the family should be able to take back the remains between Lagmonster's points 1 and 2. They can have the body, if they wish after[/] useable organs are removed.

[Darmalus]

Only with a comprehensive socialized medical system would I even consider it.

Edit: Basically you can have my body when you pay for it's lifetime care and maintenance, not before.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I honestly couldn't care less what they do with my body after I die. Use it to feed zoo animals, for all I care. I think the default setting should be to salvage the body for all possible utility - that is, if someone dies without leaving any instructions whatsoever, and the family isn't there or doesn't care, you use everything you can. Only in the face of a specific desire not to have your body used (either from the deceased person's will or their family) should it just be thrown in the ground untouched.

I really don't see any reason for people to be able to claim any specific rights for their cadaver in the first place.

[Broomstick]

How many of you would hypothetically support a system whereby a government agency took possession of one's mortal remains after death? The idea being that 1) useable organs would be salvaged as abruptly as possible following death

A surprisingly large percentage of the recently deceased are not suitable for organ donation, either due to the person's health prior to death or due to the manner of death not leaving the organs usable. I seriously doubt that even if we collected all viable organs it would solve the organ shortage. There are more people needing organs than organs available, and available organs have to be properly matched to recipients.

2) bodies not useable for salvage would be donated as research cadavers

Don't restrict it solely to medical uses, then. Corpses have also played a role in such things as crash tests for vehicles, providing information not obtainable by machines.

3) anything leftover from that would be recycled (currently, some crematoriums in northern Europe may divert heat to buildings or other structures such as public pools).

Actually, there are some serious downsides to cremation, including use of fuel to do it. An alternative is bio-reduction, where the body is basically reduced to fertilizer.

And additional two problems are 1) contamination by medications, everything from anti-depressants to medical radioisotopes which you would not want to get into the food chain, and 2) implants, from artificial joints to silicon boobies which should not be incinerated due to possible formation of toxins and/or are undesirable in the food chain.

All of which could be supported by an opt-out program, presumably, for those few who absolutely have to have some specific ritual performed with their corpse.

Nope - opt-out for anyone who simply wants to opt-out. No reason need be given. Most won't bother, and you'll get better buy in if you don't restrict the opt-out.

Frankly, I look at graveyards and think of them as a terrible waste - and at a shortage of cadavers and organ donors as a goddamned tragedy.

Yes, the lack is a tragedy but strong-arm tactics can result in blow-back which can also be detrimental.

[Enigma]

As it is, when I die, my body will be cremated. I'd rather have it put to good use. Have my corpse hanging from a tree at a body farm to act as a bird feeder (kidding.... maybe not ), or used for medical research or the like.

I have no complaints on organ harvesting.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I'd potentially be in for something similar to this:

The process, called promession, sounds like a kind of high-tech version of composting (one that avoids all the arduous turning and, uh, odor-releasing of the down-home method). It was developed by Swedish biologist Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak, who is planning to open the world’s first promatorium in Jönköping, Sweden, sometime next year. James Glave (for The Walrus) explains:

Think of the operation as a kind of corpse disassembly line. The dearly departed are first supercooled in liquid nitrogen to about minus 196°C, then shattered into very small pieces on a vibration table. “We wanted to make the body unrecognizable without using any kind of an instrument that you would see in a kitchen or garage,” [Wiigh-Mäsak] explains.

Next a vacuum is used to evaporate moisture while a metal separator, traditionally used by the food processing industry to remove stray foreign objects from meat products, shuffles aside fillings, crowns, titanium hips, and so on. (You can put that sandwich down now.) Finally, the vaguely pink crumbs are deposited in a large box made of corn or potato starch.

Surviving family members bury the box in shallow topsoil and plant a tree or shrub on top. With the exception of perhaps a few broken remnants of plastic pacemaker, in a matter of months nothing is left but memories and some lush greenery.

I'd let people harvest any organs they sorely need, then compost my body and bury it somewhere to feed a plant.

[Lagmonster]

I'd let people harvest any organs they sorely need, then compost my body and bury it somewhere to feed a plant.

That's cool and all, but the idea is whether or not to let the state, or some public institution, have ownership of all human remains and make the decisions on how to handle them. I'm thinking that an individual is either a) selfish, or b) unlikely to be aware for what purpose their bodies would be of most use. Arguably, a central organization would be useful in that regard; One that can take in, analyze, and distribute human material, as well as respond to petitions and requests from educational institutions and companies for cadavers and organs.

Okay, yeah, it's grisly. But I'm trying to decide whether or not it makes the most sense for society, or whether our taboos regarding death are not worth messing with.

[Broomstick]

There is a potential for abuse here, for regarding human beings as parts that can potentially turn a profit. I'm not talking about something as blatant as outright killing people, but something like allowing marginal organs or worse yet contamined/infected material through screening processes to increase "production" or make the agency look good can have devastating effects. We have already seen people dying from organs that should never have been transplanted (undetected rabies infection, for example) or getting diseases from biological products (HIV wiping out a generation of hemophiliacs due to virus-carrying clotting factors and transmission of prion diseases as just two examples) in a strictly volunteer, allegedly non-profit acquisition system.

By making corpse utilization mandatory you'll have a hell of a lot more problem bodies entering the system. How robust are the protection systems we can impose? We will, unquestionably, have some unintended and negative consequences from doing this. Will the good that comes of it outweigh the negatives?

[Thanas]

Germany simply dissolves old graves and destroys the remains after a set period of time (mostly 30-50 years) if the family does not wish to renew the grave.

[Darmalus]

Your organs are the most personal of personal possessions.

Are you okay with all your property being seized, home, stocks, bonds, car, cash, the crayon drawing you did when you were 5, being taken by the government to be done with as they see fit once you die? Mostly likely to be handed over to a for-profit organization? Maybe your kids should have to go to an auction to buy back the family photo album?

After all, those things are far less personal to you than you own organs. Besides, you don't need any of that either after you die.

[Lagmonster]

Are you okay with all your property being seized, home, stocks, bonds, car, cash, the crayon drawing you did when you were 5, being taken by the government to be done with as they see fit once you die? Mostly likely to be handed over to a for-profit organization? Maybe your kids should have to go to an auction to buy back the family photo album?

Are...are you suggesting that your rotting corpse has economic value to your next of kin, similar to cash and property?

I don't know what you know about decomposition, but bodies tend to a) rapidly depreciate in value if you leave them lying around (in fact, they have so little value that the usual response is identical to trash - you either burn it or toss it in a hole), and b) suck out a lot more wealth from the survivors than they could ever gain simply by virtue of paying for the services in a).

Beyond that, you are left with "it has value to the survivors which is greater than the value it would have to people waiting for an organ", which I would disagree with so hard that I'd express myself in the clearest possible way: I'd vote against it.

[Darmalus]

Are you okay with all your property being seized, home, stocks, bonds, car, cash, the crayon drawing you did when you were 5, being taken by the government to be done with as they see fit once you die? Mostly likely to be handed over to a for-profit organization? Maybe your kids should have to go to an auction to buy back the family photo album?

Are...are you suggesting that your rotting corpse has economic value to your next of kin, similar to cash and property?

I don't know what you know about decomposition, but bodies tend to a) rapidly depreciate in value if you leave them lying around (in fact, they have so little value that the usual response is identical to trash - you either burn it or toss it in a hole), and b) suck out a lot more wealth from the survivors than they could ever gain simply by virtue of paying for the services in a).

Beyond that, you are left with "it has value to the survivors which is greater than the value it would have to people waiting for an organ", which I would disagree with so hard that I'd express myself in the clearest possible way: I'd vote against it.

If nothing else, it has sentimental value, just like that crayon drawing. Everything will have more value to someone than the person who currently has it, yet 100 room mansions aren't seized and turned into low income apartments either. You'll die from exposure on the street in winter just like you'll die from lack of a fresh liver.

Personally, I think this whole question will be irrelevant as organ manufacturing matures, but my basic stance remains. If society doesn't invest in maintaining those organs via socialized healthcare from start to finish, it has no claim at all to those organs once you die.

[Enigma]

I'd rather it be a voluntary decision on the part of the individual when they are alive to decide if the government can have their body when they die than to simply have the government swoop in and take it.

[Oskuro]

There is a potential for abuse here

Well, there is always potential for abuse in anything... It should go without saying that any development should include proper oversight... And still there will be abuse.


I do agree that heavy handed tactics will have a negative effect on the population, but I also agree that the management of human remains should be, at some point, properly regulated.

Even if you're just following funerary rites, health inspections and the like should be mandatory (if they aren't right now).


I recently read about some people using 3d printers to actually print new organs using cells from somewhere else in the body. It'd be cool if bodies could be re-used as "cell cartridges" for organ printers. Would make for surreal commercials from the big printer manufacturers.

[StarSword]

I recently read about some people using 3d printers to actually print new organs using cells from somewhere else in the body. It'd be cool if bodies could be re-used as "cell cartridges" for organ printers. Would make for surreal commercials from the big printer manufacturers.

They've gone one better and can actually wash off the cells from a cadaver organ to leave the protein structure, and then use the proteins and the person's own stem cells to grow working replacement organs without danger of rejection. Still experimental but it looks workable.

[Broomstick]

Actually, no, they don't leave the "protein" structures, and you wouldn't want that anyway since they'd trip the body's immune defenses. The process leaves behind the "scaffolding" - bone, cartilage, connective tissue, etc. but stripped of immunologically problematic bits.

But yeah, basically that.

And, Oskuro - there are already laws on how to handle dead bodies, and have been for a long time. Most of them are focused on either preventing animals from eating them (a notable exception being Zoroastrians who want their bodies eaten by vultures, but in that case they take steps to prevent other critters from getting part of the meal) or avoiding possible problems due to decay and/or transmissible disease.

[Ziggy Stardust]

If nothing else, it has sentimental value, just like that crayon drawing.

Do you really not understand what "organ donation" even means? The crayon drawing isn't going to save people's lives. Your kidney will.

If society doesn't invest in maintaining those organs via socialized healthcare from start to finish, it has no claim at all to those organs once you die.

Do you think the government as a right to enforce traffic laws in jurisdictions where the roads are poorly maintained? Because that's the same logic you are using. The truth is, until such a time as organs can be mass produced out of a lab, medical science NEEDS these organs. As in, it isn't optional, it isn't a luxury, its a necessity. People's lives depend on it, often in a very immediate sense. I think you are glossing over this and treating it as if the government just wants a big warehouse of people's colons to auction off to the highest bidder.

[Borgholio]

Zoroastrians

Are there still any of them around? Or didn't it die out when the Persian empire folded?

[Simon_Jester]

Many sought refuge in India as persecution drove them out of Persia. Some have sought refuge in the United States, and other countries, as well.

[Borgholio]

Assuming they still practice their "burial" customs, is it even legal in western countries to allow a corpse to be picked clean like that?

[Broomstick]

Zoroastrians

Are there still any of them around? Or didn't it die out when the Persian empire folded?

They're still around. Not a lot of them.

The most famous one to have lived recently was Freddie Mercury, although so far as I know he did not practice the religion as an adult. His funeral service was conducted by a Zoroastrian priest, although he was cremated rather than fed to carrion birds. Being fed to the vultures isn't, strictly speaking, required, it's simply a form of acceptable corpse disposal that became common on the Indian subcontinent for Zoroastrians.

Assuming they still practice their "burial" customs, is it even legal in western countries to allow a corpse to be picked clean like that?

You could probably set something up in the US based on religious freedom. However, since there are alternative acceptable methods (like cremation) that are already codified in law they probably wouldn't bother.

[Lagmonster]

There are probably a bewildering array of legal limitations on what you can do with a corpse anyway, so much so that the government really doesn't need to step in except to punish people who ignore the rules. In fact, it would seem that your options already neatly boil down to 'destroy or donate', so there's almost no reason not to donate your body in some form seeing as how the alternative is to pay what is, in essence, a government-mandated disposal fee.

Which makes the continued serious shortages the result of either a slothful lack of planning, or continued observance of primitive rituals and taboos.