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.
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.
“Put 'em in the movies!” - Bill Hicks
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.
Fair enough
My point was more about that if my body gets used for science in say, Canada or Europe, i can probably rest easily (pun intended) knowing that my remains will be treated with respect.
In the USA its a damn near guarantee that someone will use my body in a YouTube video to score a few cheap points
I was more going off about how in the US way too many people respect nothing, not even the dead, and that everything has been cheapened
No, it wouldn’t be. There are strict limitations on the sale and use of cadavers. They can only be sold for the purpose of education or research. You’ll never find a dead body being used for a YouTube video, at least not “legally”. Don’t be hyperbolic. Besides, if you know how bodies are used for science, even medical science, it is far from what most would call “respectful”. You either are sent to a school so that students can get their hands all up in your guts for anatomical familiarization through dissection or to practice medical procedures on then summarily discarded (usually cremated and sent back to the family if the body is still in one piece), dismembered to have its parts and organs sold individually to different research sites for the purpose of testing pharmaceuticals or be purposely infected with diseases to observe their effects on tissue then also summarily discarded as bio-waste, or used for forensic science as your corpse is allowed to rot in the sun for observation on a body farm.
You know how medical science tests the effects of smoking on the lungs? Other than simply looking at the lungs of those who smoked in life, they take healthy lungs and hook them up to a pump to force it to “smoke” and then observe how it affected the tissue.
Anyways, back to the overall point…
The term “respect” is highly arbitrary. People in the US respect a lot of things, just not the same things that you respect, nor will they respect them in the same manner if you do share a mutual respect of something. Is that problematic? It entirely depends on the specific subject matter and those involved. The topic of “what is respectful” is a lot more nuanced and intersectional to why certain things have been glorified or deemed worth respecting while others have been disregarded in certain cultures and regions. Even then, it always comes down to each individual and their personal interpretation of reasoning. Thus, again, making blanket, simplistic statements is naive and not useful for discussion.
This is why I focused my point on ownership instead of subjective aspects. The only person whose input on “respectful use” that ultimately matters is the person who has ownership over the object being used, which in this case is a cadaver.
Personally, I don’t understand the notion of “respect the dead”; we’re dead, our consent and opinion don’t really matter anymore past the point of death. I especially don’t understand it in regards to handling of cadavers; they are simply inanimate objects that need to be disposed of, as they will rot and be vectors for diseases if left unattended, nothing more. If people can find uses for them, all the better.