Yesterday afternoon I felt like a hamburger (funny, I didn’t look like one), and so walked over to the nearest place I could get one: the hospital cafeteria. It’s in the basement of our large inpatient facility, and the basement is a gloomy and disordered place. But the cafeteria food is cheap and pretty good.
As I walked down the corridor, I noticed an open door right before the entrance to the cafeteria, and peeked in. There were a bunch of people lying around on gurneys, covered with sheets, with their bare feet sticking out.
“That’s funny,” I thought. “Why would they have a surgery recovery room in the basement?” It’s not very pleasant down there, and the gurneys were scattered in every direction.
I went into the cafeteria next door, nommed a creditable hamburger, and then walked back to my office. The door to the gurney room was still open, and I looked in more closely. Suddenly it hit me: those people were not recovering; they were dead.
It was the morgue, or some waiting room for the morgue. The people were absolutely still, very, very white in color, and completely motionless. One had short red hair: was he a young man? And nobody was tending them. They reminded me of the line from Louis Armstrong’s “St. James Infirmary”:
“I went down to the St. James Infirmary
I saw my baby there,
She’s laid out on a cold white table,
So so cold, so white, so fair.”
I rarely see dead people—they’re whisked out of sight as fast as possible lest they remind us of our mortality—and this was distressing. But it was distressing for two other reasons. First, there’s the proximity of the morgue to the cafeteria: they are right next door to each other. And they leave the morgue door open. Who has an appetite after apprehending that scene?
More important, I feel for the loved ones and friends of those dead people. Who would want to know that their loves ones are on view to anyone who’s on their way to get a sandwich? Or that they’re lying unattended while people gobble their meals next door? Yes, dead is dead, but I wouldn’t have wanted my parents on view that way.
Note to the U of C hospital: could you please at least close the door?
It gave you a helluva post title, though.
Seriously–how are these things allowed to happen? Is no one minding the store?
The thoughts of corpses around hamburger meat led my mind in a completely different direction, where trash movies lie…
They should close the door. But here’s a question my fellow atheists – would you be unwilling to “donate your body to science?” If not, why not? You’re not using it anymore; why not have it go to a good cause?
I’ve already donated my organs and stuff on my driver’s license and in a living will. It’s the right thing to do. Even if you’re a believer, do you think that donating your corneas will leave you unable to see in Heaven?
I agree, but I feel like some people make a distinction between being an organ donor and being a cadaver in the local med school’s anatomy lab.
It’s certainly easier to donate your organs because there are processes set up for that. Who cares what they do with my stupid body. I just want a decent head stone and bury what you can’t use. 🙂 I don’t have much family so there will be no one after me anyway (assuming I live a long life which I’m hoping for barring a ridiculous death like choking on a cough candy – which would be funny and ironic but ultimately sucky).
Maybe you’ll see whatever the person sees who gets your corneas…it would be confusing if each went to two different people.
If anyone can find any kind of use for the scrapheap I’m leaving behind, be my guest.
No warranties and no returns though.
I was sharing a whiskey with a decidedly aged friend a few days ago and the very topic came up. while the majority of his organs are going to be too trashed to be of much interest, he has donated his body to the university’s anatomy department to be carved up by a trainee quack.
So, a damned good wake is planned, and Bob might even have the opportunity of attending it – if only in instalments.
Afterwards ; ash the bits, stick the ash in a hole in the ground and plant a tree on top. I’ll have to check with him what sort he’d want – Fraxinus, perhaps?
Sounds like a noble cause. I have no problem whatsoever with my dire remains being used as a part of the medical education.
If they can use it, they can have it.
Of course. Why do you seem to be assuming I wouldn’t?
Also–I agree with JAC. And am also designated as an organ donor.
My assumption is that some people (not necessarily you) would have an irrational/emotional aversion to having their dead, naked body displayed on a table for a group of medical students to cut open, rip apart, and make jokes about(yes, we almost all make some jokes during anatomy lab – it’s part of how we deal with the uncomfortable feelings stirred up by cutting open and ripping apart dead human bodies). But I have no idea if I’m right, which is why I’m asking. I guess I wasn’t clear enough in the original comment that I was thinking specifically about cadavers in the anatomy lab.
Well, I guess we’re all entitled to a few irrational, emotional aversions. As long as we recognize the irrationality, of course. 🙂
Yeah, I’ve read enough becoming-a-doctor books to know how it goes in cadaver lab. 😀
It’s interesting, but I don’t remember ANY of the students in my gross anatomy lab acting disrespectfully toward the cadavers in our lab.
On the other hand…one of my professors, who was a gynecologist, did some very strange things with the external sexual organs of my group’s cadaver…he seemed to think I would particularly appreciate it, and took me aside to show me, and let me assure you,while there was nothing prurient nor lascivious in his discussion, nevertheless…Ummmmmm……
I regret that that particular moment is the most memorable of my Gross Anatomy lab course. Still, I learned a GREAT deal, of course, and I believe that there are a number people who owe their lives to the fact that I had that training. More so, in fact, than owe their lives to ANY organ donor (by far), especially considering that the situations that allow your organs EVER to be useful post-mortem to any living body are severely rare (you probably have no idea how difficult the hoops are through which you must jump to get organs harvested in those who are dying).
So PLEASE..donate your bodies to local medical schools for education/study. It’s more useful, so far, than organ donation, and if stem cell research proceeds as we all hope, organ donation will be nearly obsolete. I’m not arguing against the latter (Cat forbid!), but please don’t neglect the former. I cannot say enough to thank the poor homeless woman whose body taught me and many others the real structures of the human body in first-hand detail.
As for my own body…if they cannot use it in Gross Anatomy, nor for organ donation, by all means, they should feed it to felines. What could be a better fate?
A good read. Thank you.
I am an organ donor and wouldn’t have a problem donating my corpse for research or education but my family might be queasy about the idea. If one of my kids died I would donate their organs but I don’t think I could donate their bodies for research.
USA graduates about 18,000 med students per year… so that’s probably about the same number of cadavers that are needed.
And there are about 40,000 people per year that need organ transplants; multiple organs could come from the same donor of course.
I think it would be cool to donate my body to the med school at my Alma Mater… except they don’t have one.
Yeah like Jerry all my body parts are up for grabs. In Ontario you indicate this I think on your Health Card now as well.
I just renewed my driver’s license today, and renewed my commitment to organ donation.
I won’t be using them, so someone else can.
I have had do many things go wrong with my body over my lifetime that there will not be anything useful left after I die. I have specified cremation and that someone who knows me view my body entering the creamatorian oven ( too many stories about bad handling of remains)
Just to be annoying–what does it matter how your remains are handled at that point?
To me, it doesn’t matter at all; to my family, it might.
As far as I am concerned, the ashes can be flushed down.
Oh, of course.
When my Dad was cremated, I was asked if I wanted to keep his dentures. That (of all things) just really destroyed me; of all the insults to one’s dignity… I know there’s no posthumous dignity, but it’s hard not to imagine how he’d have felt knowing his daughter was asked such a thing.
Besides, they wouldn’t fit. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist that. Nobody ever accused me of having good taste). But seriously, why would anyone want to keep anything so – bizarre.
As an aside, my father lost his dentures when he went into a old folks’ hospital. So we got a new set made for him. Six months later, he lost them _again_. So he got another set made… but he died in the interim. We had the dental technician deliver them to the undertaker’s, so at least he was cremated with his ‘own’ teeth.
I think the dental technician was quite relieved when we paid for them.
I don’t see why I should be “unwilling”. A dead body is best use as donated, so that is what I set up some time ago.
I’ve chosen the organ donor option on my driver’s license, although my hope is to live long enough that nobody would want any of my parts for transplants. Becoming an anatomy cadaver would be fine by me, heck, I’d even volunteer to become Soylent Green. Just don’t kill trees in order to make a box for my carcass and then bury it. That would be silly.
But here’s a question my fellow atheists – would you be unwilling to “donate your body to science?” If not, why not? You’re not using it anymore; why not have it go to a good cause?
I’m not unwilling, but I don’t think it’s irrational to be unwilling if you have a strong emotional or aesthetic preference against your body being used in that way.
I feel like some people make a distinction between being an organ donor and being a cadaver in the local med school’s anatomy lab.
Seems like a reasonable distinction to me. Assuming your organs are actually used, the benefit from organ donation is large — often life-saving. The benefit from leaving your body for the education of med students is probably much smaller and less certain.
I don’t really see the distinction. Those surgeons who perform life-saving organ transplant operations have to start somewhere. And where they started was precisely as a med student practising on someone’s donated body.
You don’t have to have your heart transplanted into the next Einstein to make a contribution to the process.
The distinction is a matter of the size and probability of the potential benefit. I was assuming that donating your organs for transplant is much more likely to actually make a big difference to someone else’s life or health than leaving your body for med student education. One less cadaver for med students to practise on doesn’t seem likely to make much difference in actual medical outcomes.
But perhaps my assumption is wrong. According to a commenter above “the situations that allow your organs EVER to be useful post-mortem to any living body are severely rare.” Perhaps neither act is likely to have a significant effect.
By definition, a preference based only on subjective criteria such as emotions or aesthetics is irrational. Of course these preferences are justifiable and understandable, but technically they are as irrational as any other phobia.
Your definition is incomplete. I meant irrational in the sense of “contrary to rationality,” not “without rationality.” Choosing on the basis of emotion is non-rational, but it’s not necessarily contra-rational.
Thanks for clarifying that you were not using the word “irrational” in its usual sense. Reminds me of Humpty Dumpty a bit 🙂
Okay; I’m fighting an almost week-long migraine and my poor brain is not at optimal levels…But what in all manner of bizarrely imaginary places does Humpty Dumpty have to with this topic? We can’t put anyone back together again? Not trying to be rude; I just can’t think clearly when I have these.
In the weird coincident realm, I was just reading Shelly’s Frankenstein. Maybe that’s what gave me the migraine.
Ugh that migraine thing sucks – me too (medicated Friday & today).
Speaking of Shelley, I thought this was great:
http://ffrf.org/news/day/?day=04&month=08#percy-bysshe-shelley
(It does mention her, in addition to him.)
Yeah Shelley was a pretty cool poet and did so much in such a short life. But man, why did he get in that boat when he couldn’t swim!
@ Diana
I was surprised at just how outspoken (and “-written”) an atheist he was.
Sorry about the migraine. Regarding Humpty Dumpty, one of his most famous lines (from Through the Looking Glass) is the following:
That is the context in which I was referring to Humpty Dumpty, since Gary W seemed to be expressing a similar sentiment :).
Sorry to hear about the migraine. Regarding Humpty Dumpty, one of his most famous lines (from Through the Looking Glass) is the following:
That is the context in which I was referring to Humpty Dumpty, since Gary W seemed to be expressing a similar sentiment. 🙂
As to the migraine, perhaps Through the Looking Glass/i> could serve as an antidote to Frankenstein?
I’m an organ donor and would be fine with cadaver donation. Being alive and thinking about someone playing with my innards seems distasteful but, I won’t exist so it doesn’t matter. However, thinking about it, I’m going to require that a jebus-in-the-box be rigged up in my gut. If a christian gets me they’ll freak out. If an atheist gets me they’ll laugh their ass off. Either way I win!
We ought to have an opt out organ donation program; everyone is by default a donor unless they explicitly indicate that they don’t wish to be.
Since I got my first license 38 years ago I have always been listed as an organ donor. There is really no reason not to be.
I have carried a donor card for years now. Recently I just completed medical assessment for live kidney donation, and expect to be handing it over (so to speak) sometime next month. No big deal, as (like most people) I have a spare one. Live kidney donation tends to be more successful than cadaver donation, and it’s wonderful to think that I could give someone an extra 10-20 years of active life.
And, I’ve had great fun telling all the doctors, surgeons, and the psychiatrist that I am an atheist!
How admirable! How very human of you.
Although I’m getting on a bit now, still have good muscle structure from fifty plus years of weight training, so maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to leave my corpse for medical students to study….?
I was worried this post was going to be a story where the hamburger and corpses came into closer proximity to one another. I’m glad it didn’t go that way!
Ugh. I have a big aversion to dead things (why I realized forensic anthropology would not be my thing) and I can never objectify corpses; I always wonder about who they were.
We are so isolated from death in the West. I remember listening to a podcast(can’t remember which one) where they interviewed a funeral director and she talked about how people should prepare their own loved ones like they used to, to accept and understand death better. No way! I like my isolation and repression! I won’t even go to viewings in funeral homes – it’s creepy & I don’t want to remember the person that way which makes me typically western.
I was holding my father’s hand when he died. I wouldn’t take away that memory for anything.
My niece and nephew wouldn’t visit him in his last days, though. They had in their minds a day when they took him out for burgers and fries and they all had a great time together. That’s the image of grandpa they wanted to hold onto.
They do realize that they’ll have to be there for me and for their parents, though. They just couldn’t do it for him.
But I agree about the “viewing” thing. It’s creepy. No thanks.
I think both approaches deserve respect; we all know what we can handle at a given time. Just so long as the departee is not left feeling isolated before death!
My husband denied the downward spiral of his grandmother near the end; always spoke of her as having the time of her life dancing at the senior center. I think she’d have loved being remembered that way.
Oh hell, I’ll be there while they are still alive but I don’t like hanging out once dead.
I share your aversion to viewings, but not because of any fear of corpses (not that you have that, either). I just think it smacks of everyone’s delight in voyeurism.
And I hardly think I’d be at my best, were I the viewee.
Oh and by “prepare” I mean “prepare the bodies after death – wash them and such”.
Oh, ick. No.
Funny. After dad died, the staff at the nursing facility was sent in to “clean him up” before the mortuary service picked him up. And when we went back into the room, they had put his glasses on.
That kinda creeped all of us out. Mom made us take them off.
Gawd, that’s bizarre!
Here in Taiwan it’s still mostly done the old-fashioned way- the corpse is kept in the family home for a few days until an auspicious day for burial comes up in the (Lunar) calendar.
People drop by, pay their respects to the dead body, then sit in vigil- the rule is someone always has to be awake on watch.
Of course, if the wait goes past a couple of days, the amount of incense you have to burn gets pretty cloying
Eeeuuuwww.
As a survivor it would be much harder on me to witness the decay of my loved one than to have him/her whisked away after the fact. Just being in the apartment with my mother’s corpse (oddly hard to type that) for a few hours was more than enough.
I think I have a higher than usual sense of contamination that happily has not yet become germophobia 🙂
@ Diana
I understand that’s quite adaptive. 😉
Ha ha yes. Probably many of my ancestors were easily repulsed.
It’s probably better than my repression because you truly understand the person is gone, but I’m just too Western. I have close family friends who are Maori and some of their family still do a a href=”http://www.korero.maori.nz/forlearners/protocols/tangi.html”>tangihanga. Which they’ve told me they like because they get to really say good bye.
whoops too much multi tasking tangihanga.
I get a page not found in your link, Diana. 🙂
LOL that’s because I’m having html coding problems tonight.
Try this
Much better, thanks. 🙂
FWIW, at least in my “neck of the woods” (east of the Mississippi River and south of the Mason-Dixon Line), to the extent that that is somehow relevant, if there is a “receiving of friends” and a “viewing,” the “viewee” will sport glasses if most viewers never or hardly ever saw them without glasses, the glasses apparently significantly-enough changing the appearance. I rarely saw my grandparents without their glasses; they are sporting glasses in any visual memory I have of them.
We don’t know for sure what was in the burger meat. If the cooks run out of ground beef, the temptation must be great to snag a few limbs to supplement the kitchen supplies. 😉
My wife died peacefully in my arms; I wouldn’t have it any other way. After that the undertakers took over, and I didn’t see her body again, which is fine by me. Incidentally she had previously checked out the crematorium, including asking to see the furnace, which the staff coped with better than I had expected. The coffin was a cheap wicker one bought over the internet some months earlier, and which had sat in my bedroom in the meantime. It’s funny how you get used to such things.
You have my condolences and best wishes; it is a horrible thing to lose a loved one. And how good of you to now be donating a kidney!
Thank you for your kind thought.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
How fortunate for your wife to have you by her side! I’m glad you got to be there for her.
It’s an odd thing to say about death, but it sounds as if you two handled it perfectly. I’m so sorry for your loss. Thank you for the tutorial in how to do it right.
Morgues are often in the basement of the hospital/medical school, but usually are off the beaten path – and not adjacent to the cafeteria!! Someone was asleep at the wheel, leaving the door open. You shoulda kicked it shut 🙂
“Who has an appetite after apprehending that scene?”
Not to be TOO anal; however how about “comprehending”?
“Apprehending” is correct, as in “beholding”.
Now it’s my turn to be anal: apparently, Dr. Coyne would have an appetite after apprehending such a scene. That’s what happend. Now to tie it all together: he just didn’t comprehend the scene when he first apprehended it.
🙂
Hair nicely split! 🙂
Apprehend is perfectly appropriate.
Miriams second defintion: Understand or perceive.
Not to be TOO anal, but your grammar is incorrect. Neither side of the semi-colon constitutes an independent clause; therefore, it’s an incorrect of use punctuation. Also, if they were independent clauses then the conjunctive adverb “however” should have been followed by a comma in the manner demonstrated by my previous sentence. To summarise, if you want to get anal, make sure your own house is in order. 😉
Oh, dear, a Grammarian! Just my luck! You win… excuse me whileIi put my library in order —
Damn you; comma; splice; errors! 🙂
Muphry’s law strikes again.
Too much anal-ysis.
Which is why the terminus of the gastro-intestinal tract is aptly named. There is literally a “splitting apart/away.” (Re: “lysis,” “lysosome,” the “lytic” and “lysogenic” of viral reproduction, “lye” soap.)
Ugh, that is pretty horrible. No wonder hospitable food gets such a bad rap.
Probably beats hostile food, though.
lol. 🙂
…of course, the final scene from Soylent Green definitely comes to mind…
“You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”
No, wait…
LOL!
Considering the murder rate in Chicago, maybe they were running out of room. But close the door!
You had a hamburger you say? 100% USDA beef?.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. My neighborhood has an El Famous Burrito right next to a veterinarian clinic. I’m vegan.
Hang on ; “burro” is a Mexican-Spanish-Texican mongrel word for some sort of horse-donkey-indeterminate bad tempered equine mongrel, isn’t it?
And this place is famous for turning them into fast food?
Given the recent pan-European scandal over mis-labelling horse meat as beef, isn’t this honesty to be commended?
At the end of the day, isn’t every ‘burger a bit of a corpse? 🙂
They are welcome to do what they will with this bag of bones when I have done with it. Perhaps keep it as warning to others.
The U of C maintenance team should fit the door with a dead bolt.
More precisely most of our food is dead. Our digestive system prefers it that way.
And yet, much of what vegetarians eat is alive, or was right before they cooked it.
Does that meet one of the definitions for ironic?
Yes…yes it does.
I’ve always thought it a bit ironic that vegans dine almost solely on the one INNOCENT form of life on our planet. All other life forms live by either parasitism or actually KILLING other living things, but green plants actually make completely new food out of sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide.
Where is the justice in eating only the innocent life forms while allowing those who exploit other living things survive, only because the latter have nervous systems?
Wonder if humans should undertake to acquire the ability to photosynthesize? But then we’d have to restrict our mobility, like plants. Perhaps we’d have to be content with being a “hybrid” vehicle.
As regards “innocent” plants, do Venus Fly Traps and Pitcher Plants also photosynthesize?
I don’t see why ability to photosynthesize should require immobility. What about triffids, huh?
The carnivorous plants you mention (and others) are predominantly green, and they capture energy and fix carbon by photosynthesis; what they need from animals is nitrogen (in every case) and often other minerals such as calcium, phosphorus and iron.
Um, would we have the surface area?
Just doing some back of the thumbnail calculations on the basis of grass cuttings going into the wheelie bins … I get around 2000sq.m of photosynthetic area to produce a human-mass of plant material in a month ; that’s on the football (any variety I’ve heard of, to the nearest whole blue whale) field scale. Wikipedia tells me that’s on the order of a thousand times what a normal human has. There’s lots of caveats in the analysis, but a factor of a thousand is a lot to make up too.
While I could envisage getting some fraction of a human’s energy needs from photosynthesis, I doubt that it’s ever going to be a major factor in the energy supply.
Re-framing the issue as “what is the largest animal that obtains a significant (say, 25%) proportion of it’s energy production from the photosynthesis of commensal (? living in the same space, to mutual benefit) organisms ?” … Well, corals do it, but their organism size is a few millimetres across, even if I’ve collected multiple kilo colonies from multiple kilometre reefs of multiple colonies. There are “solitary” corals to some centimetres across, but they’re normally (in my palaeontology text books) living below the photic zone, so not getting significant supply from photosynthesis.
Any candidates for bigger, photosynthetically-fuelled animals?
Where is the justice in eating only the innocent life forms while allowing those who exploit other living things survive, only because the latter have nervous systems?
Seriously? Plants are not moral agents. “Innocence” is no more relevant to the treatment of plants than the treatment of rocks.
This argument that “plants are alive too” is a really–excuse my French–stupid one. I wonder if even the people who bring it up every now and then actually believe it has any substance to it.
अहंनास्मि
I just like to tease my vegetarian relatives who are condescending about it.
I’ll also point out that by the principle of common descent, we are cousins to plants and all other living things on this planet.
*like*
Its much better to find copses at snorktime. 🙂
Apparently I am not mature enough to read a story like that without the urge to watch this video:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNmcB50NALQ&w=420&h=315]
Ah, see, there’s your mistake. You should have taken the extra time, walked up to Ribs ‘n Bibs on 53rd, and gotten a Texas Burger.
They were all dead… you think… YET THE DOOR WAS OPEN!
What do you think it’s gonna be that’s going to infest Chicago in the coming weeks, mummies, zombies or vampires?
In medicine, we often become habituated to death, making it too easy to overlook something like this. Both the dead and cafeteria patrons, especially patients’ families, deserve better. I think this event is worth the attention of the hospital administration.
Someone wasn’t thinking when designing the facility.
Hasn’t any considered that maybe these were exhibitionists before they died? It might have been in the contract!
Or perhaps they were cafeteria customers!
LOL!
They really need to move their cafeteria! I trust there is no connecting door between the morgue and the cafeteria. I worry about bacteria hitching a ride…
Burgers to be?
Maggots and baby worms more likely.
Having spent my career in hospital administration, the scene you happened upon is unusual, but not unprecedented. Probably the morgue attendant was so eager to get one of those hamburgers he/she forgot to close the doors.
It reminds me of a similar experience during the first few weeks of my first hospital job (also in a teaching hospital). I walked by an open door in the Pathology department and noticed a strange item on a table. It was not until I was a couple of doors further down the hall that I realized it was a human leg, unattached to a body. I should have realized then what type of career I was getting myself into.
There is a hospital near my parents’ (actually I was born there) & it is like a labyrinth. I’ve been lost many times. It always reminds me of the corridors in the video game Doom.
I live in fear of stumbling on the morgue or something worse! I don’t want to disturb my innocence in these regards!
Cat in the Bag has died. Almost two weeks ago. I kept it under wraps all this time, but there you go, I’ve gone and let it out. Now she’s Cat in the Bed… the Flower Bed.
And yes, I’m donating my organs, tissue, limbs whatever someone can use, after I’m dead and gone.
Meh, it doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t even mind the formaldehyde-soaked cadavers for dissection; I just wash my hands and go have a burger with my hands still smelling of formaldehyde. Then again my pals and I would always say things like “I don’t think John Doe’s ever tasted this good”. I haven’t encountered a cafeteria right next to a morgue though; in fact in many places it’s simply forbidden (food preparation and serving area much be at least X meters from corpses). Perhaps the burgers seem so good because they’re soilent green?
Several years ago when dealing with the DMV, my brother was asked by the clerk if he was an organ donor. He answered, “Well, we gave a piano to the church. Does that count?”
This story reminds me of one of the great moments in science history, when Ignaz Semmelweis, (1818-1865) a Hungarian doctor working in a hospital in Austria noticed that ‘cadaveric material’ may have been transferred from the dissecting-room to the birthing clinic in the next room and ordered the young doctors to wash their hands in chloride of lime. The resistance of the medical authorities to new information is the real story. Even today you can read accounts that try to defend medical intransigence by suggesting, for example, that Semmelweis was his own worst enemy, and was a ‘bad agent for change!’. Historic Medical Revisionism (HMR) is as active today as it ever was; white-washing the past and quietly emphasising (rare) medical success in the shocking history of medicine. Anyone who has had their tonsils out can testify to those recent mistakes.
We tread a fine line between the irrational and the conservative. Even today a tiny minority of loud and vociferous ‘scientists’ try to write bogus science text-books in Texas, or propose ID, or put the Koran at the root of science, with a shocking distortion of fact. On the other hand, Darwin could never be published today. As much as we love science we should admit that it has a conservative tendency. I doubt that should a new Darwin emerge on the scene today who undermined some of science, the social sciences and medicine, his books would be published or his ideas take currency. The dismissal of new ideas by an older generation, before reading the evidence or looking at the idea, is part of science today.
As far as organ donation is concerned I think any reasonable public policy discussion should be founded on an automatic opt-in system with recourse to a choice of opting out if one feels the need to. That way there would be a greatly improved outlook for recipients actually securing an organ.
What’s an “automatic opt-in system” supposed to be? If you’re automatically added to the organ donor list, you’re not “opting in.”
I would strongly oppose a policy of automatically putting people on the list.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=1261#comic
ha ha and ewwww.
Wow. I’d be pretty distressed by that I think. When I worked at U of Manchester I was housed in the medical school building and so there was a student dissection lab and a morgue within it on the third floor. I never saw anything and I’m very sure that decorum was maintained (apart from during an incident before my time where medical students were expelled for stealing severed fingers and hiding them in their flatmates’ beds etc) but I was always aware of its presence. Far less disturbing than things that apparently went on upon the secret 4th floor though.
Ewwww the severed finger thing is so gross!