The hypocrisy of how we treat dead bodies

Post by **Cool Blue** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 8:58 pm

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europ ... index.html

"Austrian authorities are investigating whether a university committed a crime when it used corpses as part of research to develop better crash-test dummies, a prosecutor said Tuesday."

It's okay to have some rookie med student cut 'em up into a bunch of pieces, remove their organs one by one, take appendages and store them in glass jars of formaldehyde, and otherwise generally dissassemble any and all body parts in the interest of 'learning' what a kidney feels like, but not okay to use dead bodies to learn about crash physics in order to create better crash test dummies that will aid in designs that save lives on a daily basis?

Makes about as much sense as US foreign policy.

Post by **werldhed** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 9:11 pm

It depends on what the bodies were donated for. I doubt that anyone donated themselves for crash tests, but it's possible -- in which case, the university did nothing wrong.

Usually, there are strict standards for how corpses are used (at least in the US), so it also seems improbable that the bodies were not donated with consent.

At any rate, yes, there is a difference in how a dead person is used for medical training and how one is used for crash tests. I don't see how this investigation is stupid.

Post by **Postal** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 9:13 pm

A person should have their right to choose whether their body is donated or not, but ffs...it's just a body.

What's the big deal? They wanted to help out research, why should it matter what their bodies are used for?

Post by **4days** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 9:14 pm

they need more child corpses for crash-testing.

there was a thing on telly the other day saying that all the tests that determine the design of a cars safety features are for adult males.

Post by **werldhed** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 9:19 pm

Postal wrote:A person should have their right to choose whether their body is donated or not, but ffs...it's just a body.

What's the big deal? They wanted to help out research, why should it matter what their bodies are used for?

It depends on the person's stipulations. I don't know how it works in Austria (probably very differently), but here you have the right to say what your body can and can not be used for. So the university didn't automatically do anything wrong, but the donors don't automatically lose control over how they're used, either. That's why there's an investigation.