We do not need our bodies once we leave this world regardless of what you think happens after we die. We should be focused on curing diseases and extending the life of living humans. Science would go so far if we used human bodies after death instead of requiring people to give consent to something they don’t need.
This is a proper unpopular opinion because, as someone who received an organ transplant from a deceased donor, I disagree with it.
I am a huge advocate for organ donation for obvious reasons but I don’t think it should come at the cost of bodily autonomy.
Some doctors and scientists are really fucked up and value their experiements over human life. If bodies become a resource they can claim, some patients may not get the care they deserve because the body would be valuable to their studies and experiments.
There is also concerns for the organ market.
Culturally, humans have long standing and many unique traditions for caring for their dead. Someone and their remaining family should not be denied their funeral rights because science wants their body.
A better option would be increasing the amount of awareness for these programs so that people willing to donate their body or organs are informed of their existence and goals and can choose to donate.
If my body is valuable my family should get paid for it. The healthcare industry certainly is when they use the organs.
Probably why there’s such a push for people to become donors. Don’t consider the needs of the sick, but of the shareholders.
I disagree.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-bodybrokers-industry/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1800998/
the list is endless. humans are shit, even after you’re dead.
I’ll take my cremation and fuck humanity of any further support.
In fairness, pretty much any subject will have some negatives that could be pointed to and touted as an excuse for not doing something.
If there’s even a 1% chance of your body being properly useful to science in some way, and therefore humanity at large, it’s worth the odds.
Though I’d bet good money that the amount of mutilation and whatnot isn’t particularly common for science bound bodies. Much easier to steal some organs from the morgue bodies marked for non collection.
The morgue bodies may not have as high quality of organs or may not match genetically. If a billionaire puts a bounty on a liver that fits them genetically and has barely been abused, someone is going to be looking to cash in.
I wish I could live in that timeline where all morgue attendants got a page when the world’s 1% needs a good looking kidney hahaha.
Here in the UK all everyone is automatically on the donation list, you have to opt out, not opt in like a lot of countries.
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There was a scandal in the US where bodies being donated to ‘science’ were used for munitions testing by the us military. So the “who receives said body” is very important.
Technically speaking, those bodies were used for science. Just they were used for military science, not health sciences.
Yeah but there you’re talking about the US where no one gives a fuck about anything but money.
I fully agree that after tmdeath all bodies should be used automatically for either organ donation or science. I’m dead already, let my (un)timely demise be the reason why someone else can be helped
Their point is you cannot just use a blanket term such as “for science” and expect everyone else to know what is and isn’t considered appropriate. As they said, those bodies were still used “for science”… military science and weapons testing. It is still technically “for science”.
The discussion shouldn’t be on what we personally find appropriate, instead we must first determine who has authority over the cadaver. It is no longer a person with autonomy, just a bag of flesh and bone, an inanimate object. Who owns it? The next of kin? The state? Some other third entity?
Once this question is answered, it will be up to them what ultimately happens to the cadaver.
having an opt-out policy instead if an opt-in policy would allow those that care enough to opt out, but allow science and organ donation to become the cultural norm.
if you opt out, you are no longer eligible to receive organs if you need them
i disagree here. someone caring enough to opt out shouldnt be considered a detriment to the program - i dont think a punishment here is suitable; after all, in my country (usa) we want people to have different viewpoints from our own (as much as the current racist president would probably despise that phrase, it is still a strong sentiment among the people).
having body/organ donations as a normal part of society would make a plethora of organs and bodies available - having a couple fewer bodies shouldnt be reprimanded.
This doesnt clear the anti discrimination bare minimum standard for a rule given its okay if a religion says no donation and people apply that to themselves the same way it’s okay if a person says that for themselves.
a religioun says no pork, is subsidising food (which includes pork) racist?
Pretty certain that’s not true in the US. Where are you?
sorry, I was saying that it should be like that, not that it is
sorry, I was saying that it should be like that, not that it is
It’s worth giving this paper from 2021 a read. The basic conclusion is that shifting away from an opt-in organ donation system does not increase the number of actual organs available, because the number of people willing to donate organs is not the (only) bottleneck in obtaining usable organs.
Soon that will change since we’re starting to genetically modify pigs to grow human organs.
Do they even need the pigs anymore? Last I heard they could grow them with stem cells, a scaffolding and a nutrient bath.
No, I’m pretty that we’re not quite that far. So far, they can grow like a chicken nugget size chunk of muscle. But I would not be surprised to see it in my lifetime.
Took me a sec but I was able to dig up the video on it.
Giving pigs scaffolding and baths‽ Those swine!
Correct
It’s far cheaper and easier to grow a pig. There was, very recently, a breakthrough on genetically modifying a pig for a particular organ recipient? Anyone know what I’m talking about?
I live in Flanders, Belgium and we have an opt-out system of sorts. Everyone is a donor, unless official objections were made. That sounds great, but doctors need to ascertain if there are no objections, even informal ones.
So it kind of boils down to doctors still having to ask your next of kin. But - according to data from UZ Leuven, one of our biggest hospitals - asking ‘are there any objections to the normal course of events’ works better than ‘do you wish to donate you loved ones organs’. Especially during a time of grief. It says Belgium has about 30 donors per million, whereas Germany and The Netherlands have about 15. (Data from 2024)
Because of this system you can still also officially state that your organs are to be donated if possible. And apparently you can do so from the age of 12 onwards. If you do so, no questions are asked and no one is able to object.
Tl;dr In Belgium we have an opt-out system, but it’s not bulletproof. And it doesn’t result in an enormous amount of donations. There are still waiting lists, though there are more donations than in some of our neighbouring countries. Reality is messy!
Why don’t they require people to go to a government building and sign paperwork to get off then get it added to your state ID that can be scanned at death to tell if you’re an opt out
All bodies should be automatically given to science and organ donation upon death.
Let me get that right. What you’re proposing is that every human is a burlap $ack full of $$$ if not ruined by cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, or cancer from micro plastics is to be given away for free with zero compensation to the grieving family and all $xx,xxx to $xxx,xxx profits for said sold organ going to some executive?
¡Fuuuuuuuuck that shit!
¿You think this kid’s knee or kidney is gonna pay for someone not in this blood line’s Ferrari?
¡You’re out of your god damn mind!
My next of kin get market value of that organ or my shit gets burnt to ash and pressed into vinyl records so I can continue going to raves even after I am dead.
Capitalism at its finest my friends.
More like cocaine at it’s finest
Agreed. But also, cemeteries and casket burials should be banned. Complete waste of space and land. Cremate or better yet, let the animals and bugs eat my dead meat.
Why is cremation so damn expensive, though?
But I want to become a zombie and eat brains
That’s easy, just get in there
Definitely get out of the US then…
Great post! Definitely unpopular on every level, and with a solid explanation of your reasoning.
I don’t agree, not in the way it’s presented, but it’s still an awesome post.
The reason I don’t agree is that it isn’t practical. Well, not in the way it would need to be to make it useful.
See, it’s not enough that a person be a donor for their organs to be useful. They have to die in the right place, at the right time, and in a way that doesn’t otherwise prevent viability. The difficulties of matching a donor to a living recipient isn’t really limited by people checking the box to be a donor. Not opting in just pushes the decision off to the next of kin. Making it opt out isn’t going to solve the limitations, so there’s no need to deal with all the legal rigamarole to get a system for opt-out in place, much less mandatory.
As far as donating to science goes, the limitation is less about donors again. It’s proximity vs usefulness vs cost. You’d first have to overcome the social factor where the kin of the dead have a valid claim to determine disposition of remains, which is a huge barrier when trying to enact it.
But they you still run into being able to get a body to a “science” in a reasonable timeframe. Which isn’t always possible. If I die right now, the chances of me getting to a program that can prepare my body for much of anything before decomposition would set in is low. Not impossible, just difficult because even that teaching hospital in the next county doesn’t use cadavers for education, or experimentation.
I’m too far away from any of the “body farms” for use in that field of research. Even if decomposition wasn’t a factor, anthropology and osteology programs don’t really need more bones. So, if I specifically wanted my remains to go to something like that, I’d have to pay for it. Which is no longer donation in my mind, it’s just an unusual funeral. When my bones got to whatever university was willing to store them, they’ll sit in a box in a room and never do anything useful.
There would need to be something unusual about my remains for them to be useful in education at this point.
Medical research doesn’t need dead bodies often.
So what science is it going to?
The answer is none because the number of people voluntarily donating is already meeting demand for research.
But, hey, maybe it would be worth setting up a cadaver transportation and storage system anyway. Maybe future research would need them. But, it would need to be set up. Preservation has to be done locally, so tack it onto existing medical examiner’s offices. They apply whatever method is determined to be best to the bodies. Then they ship them to some kind of centralized storage. We can build those over existing cemeteries, so it’ll be decades before we run out of land to build them on.
Once there, staff would maintain the remains. Most likely frozen, since chemical preservation causes other hassles. So you’d have freezer cemeteries that can build upwards instead of outwards, which is definitely a good thing.
Then, they can stay there until someone needs a dead body, but doesn’t need it freshly dead. Even has the side benefit of still allowed kin to visit!
But, still, dead bodies aren’t very useful for “science”. Great for training new doctors though. So we’d always have enough on standby for that.
I definitely reached the view that I would donate my own body after reading Stiff, by Mary Roach many years ago. The funeral industry is nuts.
That said, it’s offputting to make it compulsory. There should be a focus on awareness.
Long before I met her, my wife worked in mortuary sciences. I often forget that, though, because she got into different fields and I’ve never encountered her in her original environment.
Still, every once in a while she’ll come out with something like “so once I was working on this dead guy” and, well, let’s just say all the attention in the room will suddenly be centered on her.
