
Who Owns the Dead? - Thevet
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122130/who-owns-dead
======
Udo
I dissected the dead in med school, and I've worked as a TA in anatomy class
afterwards. Several close family members have died recently. I cared for my
mother when she became terminally ill, and ultimately had to watch her die. I
had my share of contact with death, and I'm only prefacing this to show where
I'm coming from.

When a person dies, what made them a person is suddenly gone. What remains is
a lifeless shell. I never saw a dead body that looked like it was "just
sleeping". It may sound callous to some, but dead people are not people. It's
a little bit different in the US though, compared to the EU, where I come
from. Over here, funeral homes do not go to heroic lengths in order to
cosmetically make a dead body appear lifelike again. But overall I stand by my
opinion that it takes an extraordinary effort to look at the dead and _not_
see that the person who lived there is not inside anymore.

Contrast this to the article, where dead people are being talked about as if
they were still alive. I suspect these wishes of taking care of dead bodies of
loved ones comes from an inability to recognize what death actually is. To me,
passages of this article read as if the dead somehow required nursing and
comfort.

There are many good reasons why it's a good idea to use the services funeral
homes provide. First off, I am very suspicious that following such a huge
loss, handling the dead body of a relative is a good idea psychologically. I
am very grateful I did not have to do this when family members died. Even in
cultures where families are expected to take care of their own dead, usually
outside people from the village come in to help with the actual process.

Most importantly though, a lot of dead bodies pose a public health risk,
especially those of older people with a history of hospitalization. I would be
very concerned about multiresistant infections such as MRSA. It's not safe for
family members to handle these bodies.

~~~
anonmeow
>When a person dies, what made them a person is suddenly gone. What remains is
a lifeless shell

This is a quite convenient thought conforming to our current pro-death
culture.

Information that is stored in the cell connection structure of the mammal
brain isn't irreversibly destroyed at the moment of death, as one of the many
similar studies shows [1] . There are existing methods to preserve some
(possibly large) part of this information lots of HN readers have probably
heard about. Knowing these facts and being really honest with ourselves we
will have to conclude that the final death of the individual occurs when this
information-storing fine tissue structure of him disintegrates into
unstructured matter. The question becomes then - who, by his indifference or
by his profession lets this disintegration process run to its end.

Perhaps future generations will look down on us for perpetuating such barbaric
customs that lead to rotting of uncountable millions of people into
nothingness.

1\.
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v521/n7552/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v521/n7552/full/nature14225.html)

~~~
astazangasta
On the other hand, we know that just a few minutes of hypoxia produces
irreversible brain damage. The brain is a delicate organ and begins decaying
immediately at the point of death, with massive loss of information.

~~~
Udo
Yes and no. Most hypoxic brain damage occurs in the form of re-perfusion
injuries. If that cascade could somehow be halted, prolonged anoxic episodes
would not necessarily lead to the cell death landslides we see today after
strokes and cardiac arrests. While anoxia most certainly depolarizes the whole
structure, leading to the loss of whatever is currently in short term memory,
the more permanent structures of the brain should survive episodes of maybe an
hour or more, if we could only stop the apoptosis triggers from happening as
soon as blood flow is restored.

~~~
joshmarlow
This is super interesting. Links or other sources?

~~~
Udo
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ischemic_cascade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ischemic_cascade)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excitotoxicity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excitotoxicity)

[http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1161422-overview](http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1161422-overview)

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2841970/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2841970/)

The status quo of efforts basically discards the totally anoxic tissue after a
stroke, focussing on protecting the (often large) partially perfused border
region. This is what's practical now, but the fight about the totally ischemic
core regions is far from over.

It's a race between anoxic necrosis (which is the point of no return, where
passive cell dissolution happens) and active cell death cascades that are
triggered in the fully or partially reperfused cell. The latter one can
potentially be halted, the first one leads to irreversible information loss.
What the _actual_ timing windows are on both of these in the human brain is
subject to active research and the view on them is likely to change over the
coming years.

I posted links mainly to stroke and TBI-relevant articles, because that's
where the research happens. However it's important to keep in mind that the
fully dead brain is relatively static, whereas damaged areas in the living
brain are subject to internal "cleanup" mechanisms pretty much right away. In
this context, prolonged cardiac arrest might turn out to be preferrable to a
stroke.

~~~
joshmarlow
Thanks you for the link!

------
kijin
Requiring professional handling of dead people has certain benefits. It
reduces the chance of infection (a lot of people in West Africa caught Ebola
at funerals last year), and it probably also makes it more difficult for
suspicious deaths to go unnoticed. Poisoned your uncle to get his money? The
funeral director might call the police.

So it makes sense for professionals to get involved at least in the early
hours after death, even if only to ensure that the body will not trigger an
epidemic. But most of the rest of what we think of as a funeral is just a
bundle of arbitrary practices -- some traditional, others invented and
popularized by hospitals and funeral homes who profit from them. There is no
reason to enshrine them in law. Families should be free to do as they please
with their deceased, as long as they don't pose a threat to public health or
interfere with a criminal investigation.

~~~
MatekCopatek
The public health aspect is definitely important. The country where I live has
very strict limits about handling dead bodies - they can only be buried in
official cemeteries. If you opt for cremation, the ashes must also be buried
or spread in selected official locations where they don't pose a hazard.
Keeping grandpa in a can on top of the fireplace is out of the question.

While I don't value physical remains, I understand some people really do and
their opinions must be respected. But it's similar to religious circumcision -
when your customs start interfering with people's health, you lose absolute
rights to always do what you want.

~~~
icebraining
Are the hashes of dead people really any more dangerous than the ashes of coal
or wood that every fireplace or BBQ produces? Sounds too heavy-handed an
approach to me.

~~~
kijin
Hashes of dead people sound like you took a SHA hash of each of them to
remember the unique mark that they left on Earth forever.

"Here lies John Doe, commit ID: 1b372d0e."

On a more serious note, if the funeral director and crematory did their jobs
properly, anything dangerous (such as dental fillings containing mercury)
should have been removed, either before cremation or before grinding.

My country is slightly more lenient. My grandparents' ashes are buried in my
parents' back yard, and we had to do quite a bit of paperwork to make it
legal. It's still illegal to scatter the ashes in any public land or body of
water, and I can understand that because certain scenic locations would
quickly become a big pile of ashes if it were allowed.

~~~
angdis
What people do with ashes is completely unenforceable. How can anyone stop
somebody from putting remains wherever they like? How would anyone know?

Technically, they're not "ashes" but "cremains" and are composed almost
entirely calcium and salts which is very different from ash (the residue of a
fire burning).

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Correct, a huge amount is ground-up bone matter. For some reason though,
society is more comfortable with the thought of grandma being incinerated than
pulverised in a crusher, even though a cremation involves both, so it's not
well known. ;)

------
shiggerino
>The funeral home staff arranged the girl over dry ice to slow her decay

>Knox slept curled up in the small space beside it at night

Sounds like a recipe for more dead people than strictly necessary.

~~~
Dylan16807
Is that likely to cause problems? CO2 burns and it requires a lot of it to
displace oxygen.

~~~
kaybe
What do you mean, it burns?

Well, it will stick to the ground since it is heavier than air, and it is
toxic long before oxygen is displaced [1]. And dry ice contains a very large
amount of gas!

[1] [http://www.principia-scientific.org/at-what-concentration-
do...](http://www.principia-scientific.org/at-what-concentration-does-
co2-becomes-toxic-to-humans.html)

~~~
Dylan16807
>What do you mean, it burns?

Discomfort. But I can't seem to find a source on what percentage is necessary.
It might be higher than the suffocation percentage.

~~~
kaybe
You mean, the gas? Dry ice, yes, because it is cold, but the gas? (This is the
first time I heard that and I find it hard to imagine.)

~~~
nate_meurer
I think Dylan's referring to the way elevated CO2 stings your eyes, nose,
throat. Lungs too if it gets that far. It's weird sensation, and it definitely
feels "hot" in a way. Asphyxiation by CO2 is quite unpleasant.

~~~
kaybe
Ah, I see. That makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.

