Burke and Hare redux

[rubato]

You brought up the Catholic Church and when the facts were brought out could not face them so you made up a bullshit reason to change the subject.

You will never be able to give an honest morally coherent explanation for their consistently horrific behavior. Castrating someone because he reported being raped by a priest?

Yrs,
Rubato

[RayThom]

You brought up the Catholic Church... Castrating someone because he reported being raped by a priest?
Yrs,
Rubato

We don't know the full story here. Maybe it's merely coincidental and they needed a new castrato in the boys choir. Bad timing is all... maybe?

[Lord Jim]

You brought up the Catholic Church blah blah blah blah....

LOL!

I referenced the Catholic Church in the context of mocking your ignorant, simpleminded obsession with trying to blame Christianity in general, (and Catholicism in particular) for virtually every evil thing in the history of mankind...

(While you of course credit science with nothing but All Good Things...)

As anyone with a third grade reading level would easily grasp from my post in the context of the topic:

the unlawful retention of dead children’s body parts for research...

...The NHS in Scotland was forced to admit to having unlawfully retained about 6,000 organs and tissues in hospitals between 1970 and 2000, many of which belonged to children.

Must be those evil Catholics again...

Oh wait...

This was done by scientists...


Has anybody been prosecuted?

I then went on in some in some detail in two subsequent posts to address the issues raised in the OP:

I am sure that the motives were good

The list of illegal, immoral, and unethical things that have been done with "good motives" is a very, very long one...

"good motives" are a frequently used rationalization for bad deeds...

I'm sure Josef Mengele believed he had "good motives"...

Certainly the nuns that rube is so fond of posting about who pressured young unwed mothers to give up their babies for adoption believed their motives were good, [See rube, that's me condemning those nuns...]ditto the Australian officials who forcibly separated Aboriginal children from their parents...

In this case the primary problem looks to me to be, (as it so frequently is) hubris...

A belief on the part of those engaged in this vile practice that they were not bound by norms of legality, morality and ethics...

the ethics of the day may have been to avoid distress to the parents by disclosing that tissue was retained for research purposes.

I'm pretty sure that "the ethics of the day" was to not do this at all without the permission of the parents...

That's certainly what the law was...

But of course if you're going to do something illegal, immoral, and unethical, it's undoubtedly best not to inform your victims of your actions...

But of course, (as I fully expected) rather than address any of those issues, and the actual topic at hand, (the misdeeds of Scottish scientists) you seized on my mocking reference to launch into yet another repeat of misdeeds by some associated with the Catholic Church...

Will you now finally, at long last, stop with the diversions and address the actual topic?

I realize that what the scientists in Scotland did is not the worst moral abomination perpetrated by scientists...

Afterall, it was scientists who developed the whole phony modern concept of "race" and the evil of "racial hierarchy", it was scientists who conducted the vile and infamous Tuskegee Study, and of course scientists played a huge and important role in the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany...(to name just three of numerous examples)

But can you bring yourself to express even the mildest condemnation of what the Scottish scientists did?

Castrating someone because he reported being raped by a priest?

You can mark me down as opposed to that rube...

I condemn it absolutely and without reservation...

Your turn...

[BoSoxGal]

Doesn't anyone else want to talk about green burial?

[Scooter]

I have as close to a green burial planned as is allowable in this province - donate my body to scientific research (no organ donation possible for me, unfortunately), no embalming, burial in a cardboard box "casket".

[Bicycle Bill]

Doesn't anyone else want to talk about green burial?

I have a reservation for the fourth spot in our family plot alongside mom, dad, and my maternal grandfather.  And when I finally do shuffle off this mortal coil it is my intention to be cremated and have my cremains placed in a old coffee can or something similar.  Then, after a power auger has drilled down about six feet or so, the funeral director can stand over the hole with the coffee can and say whatever needs to be said in final farewell before he concludes with "Bombs away!" and lets it drop.

-"BB"-

[BoSoxGal]

Cremation is environmentally toxic too - the greenest plan is wrapped in cloth inside cardboard - or soft pine if the cemetery requires a solid container. Just FYI. Your rotting flesh makes great worm food!

[Scooter]

I'm not sure what the smell quotient will be after I've been used for research purposes, but if it's possible to have my body at a service before burial, I'd like to do what I saw done for a friend who was also buried in a cardboard box many years ago - there were multicoloured markers and pencils that people used to write messages on it before it was buried.

[RayThom]

... Just FYI. Your rotting flesh makes great worm food!

[Gob]

Doesn't anyone else want to talk about green burial?

I don't look good in green.

[BoSoxGal]

That's an excellent video RT, many thanks for sharing it! Those illustrations were fantastic!

[Burning Petard]

Heard an item on NPR news what was touted as a greener form of cremation. In an act (IMNSHO) of marketing hype, they called it 'water cremation' Essentially, the body is placed in a pressure cooker with a potassium hydroxide solution and cooked at high temperature. Every thing but plastic, bones and metal is reduced to liquid, which they implied could just be sent to ordinary waste water. The bones would then be pulverized and presented in the way of other cremation. It was described as much 'greener' because now mercury from teeth fillings would not be sent to the atmosphere and less heat energy is required. Currently this treatment is available in California.

Well maybe. The mercury teeth fillings are still a problem in this method. Hg is elemental and the best environmental hope is to chemically bind it with something else, hopefully for a long time, that will not be absorbed by anything up the food chain. But that liquid would not be harmless. It would be sterile, but it would also be very high pH and need neutralization.

Me, I want the flag and casket and burial spot the government promised me for my 3 years 5 months 1 day and approximately 2 hours I served in military active duty. I have given carefully instructions to my potentially surviving family that after death I don't care what happens to 'the remains.' I carry the donor card. If my well used body has utility for parts recycling, great, but otherwise do whatever they want. I hope they can get the cheap metal government casket (they used to be made in the ammo plant run by DuPont just to the East of Independence Missouri, where in my frivolous youth we used the parameter road for a drag strip.) If they can get the casket without a burial, it should make a good water resistant large tool box .

snailgate

[RayThom]

BP sez:... Every thing but plastic, bones and metal is reduced to liquid, which they implied could just be sent to ordinary waste water..."

Perhaps this could be named "Soylent Blue?"



"Grandma was always good to you... now drink what's in front of you, young man."