The Real Body Snatchers 280
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC are reporting on a grisly trade lying behind the booming business for replacement body parts in medical procedures. Many unscrupulous "dealers" will procure body parts from anyone willing to deal them — e.g., undertakers, medics — and will process them for resale onto legitimate companies. Apparently a fully processed cadaver can fetch up to $250,000. Now, who says I'm worth more alive than dead?"
Attention teenage single mothers (Score:5, Funny)
I don't get the big deal.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Anyone know how you might get into this - as stock, not an employee...
DugUK
Re:I don't get the big deal.... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:I don't get the big deal.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:I don't get the big deal.... (Score:5, Informative)
The issue isn't that your body parts shouldn't be used to help someone else, the issue is that these folks were simply taking the parts, or the entire body, without the permission of either the deceased or their families. Essentially, they were grave robbers without the grave.
It comes down to consent. Think of it as an extended form or Opt-in. Unless you specifically say you want your parts to go to someone else, they stay with you.
Then of course there are the whole host of religious issues which don't need to be discussed but should be mentioned in relation to the above reason.
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Having watched the BBC documentary, the bigger issue is that of the use of diseased or otherwise unsuitable bodies. For instance one guy they spoke to contracted Hepatitis from an illegally supplied transplant.
Spot on. Consent isn't really an issue in my mind. If the body didn't sign an organ donor card while alive, you can always get consent post-mortem. "If you have any reservations about me taking your organs, please let me know. What? No objections? Alright then." [Sound of chainsaw starting.]
Re:I don't get the big deal.... (Score:5, Informative)
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Also, they're making big $$$ over selling these parts, so it's not just a matter of helping people. And since money's involved, who's to say the parts they're selling are transplant quality.
Re:I don't get the big deal.... (Score:5, Funny)
Transplant quality? Of course it's transplant quality! Here at Honest Ed's Used Body Parts, all our parts are transplant quality! Take this pelvis for instance, almost good as new. Belonged to a little old lady who only used it to walk to church on Sundays. What? Yeah, I suppose that could be a little osteoporosis there, but I'll have the boys in the shop fix that right up. Put a couple of titanium pins in and it's good as new. Listen, if it's such a big problem, I can even throw in a couple of ears to sweeten the deal, maybe a lung.
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Re:I don't get the big deal.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You must not live in the US, I'm guessing Canada. Here the poor have no health care, and many middle class people have no health care either because they can't afford the insurance premiums. Since the poor can't go to a doctor and fix a problem when it's small, their only health care is the emergency room. Lack of mental health care causes massive homelessness for crazy people who could be treated and become productive members of society.
Debt collectors for doctors hound you just as hard here as credit card companies. Doctors and nurses do it for the money - the dentist I had when young (he's long since died) said that when he was in college he decided on dentistry when his wife ran up huge dental bills.
America is a land whose inhabitants worship the almighty dollar to the exclusion of everything else, where husband and wife work and strangers raise their children in day care centers, since the money is more important than their own kids (My ex stayed home, but we were the exception). Money here is even more important than life, liberty, love, and friendship. Money is seen to equal happiness.
It is a land of plenty, but it is an impoverished nation when one considers the things that really matter. Because of the national religion of mammon worship (mammon worshipers who mostly consider themselves Christian) we are not very damned likely to ever get universal health care like the civilized world has.
My best friend's name was Jim Dawson. I knew him since I was a teenager. His employer didn't offer health insurance, and he contracted appendicitis. When his appendix burst he was rushed to the hospital for surgery, and his credit was ruined as he struggled to pay off his medical debt. He knew something was wrong with him, but wasn't about to put his family through the hell they had gone through at the hands of the bill collectors.
He died of a heart attack in 1992, two weeks short of his 40th birthday. Had health care been available to him he would be alive today.
My country's method of paying for health care is nothing short of barbaric. I hope Jim's ghost haunts all of you who oppose universal health care.
-mcgrew
Re:I don't get the big deal.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I lost my job in the tech bust, lost my health care, nearly lost my house. It only took 8 months of unemployment to do that. Could happen to anyone. I didn't qualify for any free health care. I looked into it extensively. I got bronchitis which developed into pneumonia from lack of care, I ended up with several thousand dollars owed to the hospital and permanent lung damage.
I paid my premiums for 20 years, never got sick, and the one time I needed health care it wasn't there for me through no fault of my own. Now I can't buy insurance at all since I have a pre-existing condition. For me, and millions of other Americans, the system is broken.
I can't believe it's legal for insurance companies to take premiums from healthy people and then refuse coverage when you start to need it.
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I'm sure they asked the deceased, and hearing no objection, decided to sell the body parts.
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Oh, thanks a lot... (Score:3, Funny)
Let's see:
Organ donor card? check.
Sunday NY times? check.
1994 jeep cherokee? check.
road map of my nations capitol with dump sites marked? check.
All right, I'm ready for the end, when it comes.
"I'm not affraid of dieing. Ijust don't want to be there when it happens."
Re:I don't get the big deal.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I did RTFA, so the big deal isn't the sale or use of bodies or their parts per se, but the fraudulent and criminal means by which they are obtained.
One example given was the crematorium owner in California who charged a woman for the cremation of her son. He gave her an urn of furnace scrapings and turned around and sold the parts of the man's body, keeping the unsold inventory in freezers in the attic of the funeral home. That's fraud. One could argue that it doesn't really matter whose cremains you receive, but it's still fraud even if you don't know you're being duped. Actually, it's fraud especially if you don't know you've been duped.
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Sounds unlikely to me: freezing destroys the cells. That's why transplantations are time critical.
Re:I don't get the big deal.... (Score:5, Informative)
Fantastic book about uses for dead bodies (Score:4, Interesting)
Safety testing: putting corpses in cars and crashing them gives much better results on skull fractures and such than Buster The Dummy. Likewise, dropping corpses in elevators or off buildings into safety nets, or measuring the protective qualities of bullet-proof jackets. It's hard to get good results using pigs.
(I saw Mary Roach read from this book one time, and it was creepy, not because of her and the book, but because just about everyone in the audience ended up asking really detailed, scary questions about treatment of dead bodies, since apparently most of them had experience in the subject.)
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Now that strikes me as a bit odd. These people are already dead. He didn't kill them. So my first question is: does a dead body have rights ? I'm pretty sure it does not. Does it belong to anyone ? This one I don't know. But assuming it belongs to his/her heirs
Re:I don't get the big deal.... (Score:4, Informative)
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The "big deal" is that people are making a profit (Score:2)
Re:I don't get the big deal.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, some could have idea of killing of healthy (aka, only minor issue like broken leg) patients to get body with top quality organs (people who get organ-preserving damage done to body like broken legs are generally healthy+active life types with bodies in good shape.). And medic can easily get untraceable kill. Embolism is bitch.
And imagine if common thugs could cash you in too
Re:I don't get the big deal.... (Score:5, Funny)
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My biggest beef is that the family of the deceased doesn't get any part of the profit. If the body is being used for science and some business dude can make up to $250K, why shouldn't the family get a nice chunk of that? Say half? This would be a good way to help people who don't have life insurance to help out their lo
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Your organs will be given to rich, unhealthy people to keep them alive for another eighteen months. In addition, doctors will be far less willing to save your life if their hospital can earn more money by selling your liver.
People who support organ donation always forget that todays organ donation "industry" is fueled by dead Chinese prisoners, poor kidney donors, and yes, people robbing graves. It's funny, I can trace the be
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Two thoughts occurred to me in relation to this.
1: A cure for being dead? Um....
2: Why, when we can make millions of new people a day through highly enjoyable and natural (if somewhat sticky) methods, would we be wanting to defrost some dead people and try to bring them back? It's not like they'd be needed or anything.
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AB Normal?
Sure sure... (Score:4, Funny)
Are you sure it wasn't your cousin's mother's sister's uncle?
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He's from Arkansas, it's the same guy!
Re:You think it's no big deal (Score:5, Funny)
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rj
Re:You think it's no big deal (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You think it's no big deal (Score:5, Funny)
Anyway, to make a long story short, she was missing three fingers, her left kneecap, three and a half yards of small intestine, three quarters of her right lung, and her spleen. Really scary stuff.
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Niven was right. (Score:5, Insightful)
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This will have to change, because there aren't enough young people to service all the old people, so the system will collapse if it continues to run as it has been. But it would be better if we could stop wasting resources on treating old sick people and start using them to treat young people with a future ahead of
Re:Niven was right. (Score:5, Insightful)
That should be a permanent entry in your medical records.
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Come to think of it, I should put that in writing and put it in the safe with my daughters nest egg.
I have no desire to linger on past my time. I know how many chapters there are in my life, and I have no desire to try to cheat the universe. I expect I will be basking in the radiance of my many accomplishments, marveling at what my progeny are doing with their lives and be rather tired of struggling by the time they're ready to start sticking tubes and pins into me, and that's ok with me
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Re:When does the government get involved? (Score:5, Funny)
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Murder is typically used to refer to unlawful killing, and since it is government who define the laws, they can simply declare the killing they perform to not be unlawful.
Sometimes it's reclassified as murder after the government doing it has been deposed.
When an american soldier shoots an enemy combatant in iraq, is that murder?
Again, life imitates science fiction (Score:2, Informative)
Hmmm (Score:2, Funny)
It depends... do you know the secret combination to a safe holding multibilion dollar amounts and are susceptible of talking under... preemptive advice?
Hmm (Score:4, Funny)
Don't get the wrong idea, I'm quite attached to it.
So you'll have to prise it from my cold dead hands (or over my dead body)...
Oh wait...
I can beat that (Score:3, Funny)
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Don't get the wrong idea, I'm quite attached to it.
One future cadaver for sale, liver not included (Score:3, Interesting)
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Imagine if some ghetto/trailer trash could just knock-off a fami
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They are trading bears? (Score:5, Funny)
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George Carlin was right, someonelse too (Score:4, Funny)
A related BBC news article (Score:2, Interesting)
How about this [bbc.co.uk] very recent article, also from BBC. The crime they describe is blood donations (for cash) from a farm of living people.
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They don't like the idea of people selling blood, because then they won't be able to continue getting free donations. On the other hand, the number of people giving blood would increase massively if people were paid for it.
Remembering Alistair Cooke (Score:5, Informative)
How much would organ donation help? (Score:2)
How much of a market would there be if the organs were available as a result of donation?
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Where was that? I didn't see it in your post.
"I wonder how many people who do not give away their auto mobiles after they die and no longer have any use for them are to blame for car theft. No need to steal a car if you can legally obtain one that has been donated for your use for free."
I fixed your post to make it more accurately reflect the situation.
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Besides, due to religious reasons, many people believe they have a use for their bodies after they died. You'll be more likely to get cars donated to stop theft (as if such a thing would work, which was the point of the grandparent) then it is to get people to donate their bodies after death.
p.s.
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The "a
Shhhh..... (Score:3, Funny)
Oblig. Futurama (Score:5, Funny)
Shady organ dealer: Yes, gills. Then, uh, you don't need lungs anymore, is right?
Fry: Can't imagine why I would.
Shady organ dealer: Lie down on table. I take lungs now, gills come next week.
So how long (Score:3, Informative)
After that, of course, public objections to the death penalty drop since it's a source of spare parts. Eventually death becomes the standard penalty for any felony.
Imagine if *you* had the right to sell your corpse (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Imagine if *you* had the right to sell your cor (Score:2)
It's a good idea. With the aging of the baby boomers and looming medical care costs for families, it makes sense.
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Obligatory (Score:2)
The Value of Taco's Body (Score:3, Funny)
I didn't think so.
There's a mark-up somewhere... (Score:2)
Basic supply and demand... (Score:2)
They can have my body (Score:3, Funny)
for example... (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alastair_Cooke#Later_Life_and_Death [wikipedia.org]
- the bodysnatchers changed his age on his death certificate from 95 to 85 (presumably to bump up his value), and ignored the fact that his cancerous bones would have been useless for transplant. Caveat emptor indeed.
No Bene tleilaxu references (Score:2)
health concerns (Score:2)
Obviously worth more alive (Score:2)
One often overlooked of human organ harvesting.... (Score:3, Interesting)
If a person, as an adult, wants to be circumcised, male or female, they are free to make that choices for themselves, with fully informed consent. it should be the right of the person to make their own choices about removals of normal and undiseased parts of their bodies. It is a basic human right to physical integrity, and unless we uphold a medical standard and universal principle which requires an actual medical abnormality to be present on the part to removed from an unconsenting, this right is not being honoured and respected, and as well, we have no standard to define what is an assault. Any clear assault could be made permissable by society at its own whim, even if it is to the detriment of individual rights. Since circumcision cannot be undone and what is taken cannot be gotten back, the decision should be the person whose body it is, since only they will be able to decide what is best for them. Perhaps some men prefer to remain intact for aesthetic reasons or to retain full sensitivity. We should do what gives the individual the most freedom, since all rights and liberties are based in the individual. Parents do not have a right to do anything to their children and their responsibilities are to protect their children from harm. Children are not extensions of their parents bodies and children do have human rights which are seperate from the parents and are considered seperate, individual persons. Removing or destroying a healthy and undiseased part of a childs body is considered child abuse and it is an assault upon the child by definition , circumcision is a removal of a healthy and undiseased part of the childs body. Removals of parts of the body are permenant and cannot be undone later. A person can always change their beliefs later on, but they cannot undo damage to their body if they did not want this. Therefore, removal of normal parts of human anatomy should be deferred to a time when the person is of the age they can make with fully informed consent these decisions for themselves. The foreskin is a normal and healthy part of the human anatomy and has been a part of the anatomy of mammals and their predecessors for over 100 million years. All mammals have foreskins, including both males and females.
Of course we already know that male or female circumcision is an invalid and wrong genital mutilation of children, since it violates medical ethics. Everyone has a basic human right to a whole body, and to not have parts of their body removed without their consent unless there is a serious, critical, present and current medical condition on that part and where removing it is necessary to treat that medical ab
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Just lie down on this table and close your eyes. Sorry it's a bit cold, but you won't notice after a few moments.
Sell yourself. (Score:2)
Just get a guarantee for them to wait until you're dead before they start dividing you.
Yeah, I know. Something I ate disagreed with me (and no, you can't have my stomach).
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