Oi scientist, have a heart
New consent requirements that scientists must meet before using bits of us in research have caused uproar. The scientists feel they should just be allowed to carve chunks off the still-warm corpses of our loved ones and do their filthy experiments on them regardless of how we feel about it.
Scientists hate impediments' being placed on their work, regardless of how unsavoury their work is felt to be by those of us who don't spend our working days torturing puppies or dissecting corpses. They think nothing of digging up grandma and ripping out her heart. It wouldn't surprise me if they fried it and ate it in some garish "scientific" ritual.
Certainly, you'll never get her bones back.
I say damned right scientists should get our consent. Our bodies are ours alone, every piece of them. When we die, our families are the custodians of our bodies. Why should we be considered so much meat? I know the Buddha said we're just sacks of shit with holes at either end, and he was probably right, but it's hard to feel that the vehicles that have served us in this incarnation (whether there are others is a moot point) should be ill treated when we no longer inhabit them. The mistreatment of corpses -- the considering of them as "just tissue" -- is to me symptomatic of the mistreatment of other human beings. If nothing about us is worthy of respect, we can be made into slaves, become targets for one another's hatred, and dissolve into meaningless, valueless sacks of shit with holes at each end.
posted by Dr Zen @ 11:03 pm
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