Serious, swear-to-God question here: Do they remove breast implants from the bodies of the dead before they are buried, or do they leave them in there?
Why would they? Do they remove cheek implants? Chin implants?
Don’t you believe in recycling?
What about cremations?
You wanna buy them or something?
I’ve always imagined archaeologists 10,000 years from now finding one of these graves.
“The body appears to be that of a female, aged about thirty. Two bags made of an unknown pliable substance were found resting on the chest of the woman. The purpose of these objects is unknown, but it is believed that they were of great ritual significance, possibly indicating that the woman was a shaman.”
What about them?
The furnace is hot enough to burn most foreign materials. I think things with batteries (such as pacemakers) are taken out as they could explode, but most everything else is burned down.
I don’t know… that’s part & parcel of what I am asking. Things like teeth or bone augmentations (pins, screws, etc) I can understand leaving in , but subcutaneous cosmetic things like breast implants… what is the standard?
If you must peer into my sick mind, my original thought was
If they remove them, is some sicko going to steal them / if they bury her with them is some sicko going to try and steal them?
If she (or anybody who has breast implants, obviously) is cremated, do they burn them? Does silicone even burn?
I’m asking a serious question here. Are future generations going to dig us up and find bags of silicone in with our remains?
Probably. If they where to remove them, they would most likely be destroyed for exactly that reason.
Actually, if they were destroyed it would be because they’re medical waste. They were inside a human being and would be covered in bodily fluids that carry a risk of transmitting contamination.
I don’t know how much the saline bags themselves cost — Anna Nicole likely did not have silicone, as those were until recently restricted only to certain cases of prosthetic reconstructive surgery — but I doubt it’s worth the cost of harvesting and sterilizing them except to the most unusual collector.
They do remove artificial joints prior to cremation. Titanium burns a little too hot!
Removing the implants would itself be an unnecessary surgical procedure. Can’t imagine why they would do this.
You could probably sell them on eBay for a million dollars or so.
Theoretically, so was removing Einstein’s brain. There are also any number of alleged unconfirmed detatched celebrity specimens floating around — skulls, penises, fingers, whatever.
Well then just dig up the whole body and sell that.
I find it hard to believe anyone would pay a million bucks for some implants and that the sale could go through without someone going to jail.
Any coroners on the board? When they do an autopsy I understand that they remove all organs and weigh them, and put them back into the abdomen. I’m not sure what that would mean for breast implants. I’m also not sure that you’d refer to an autopsy as “surgery.”
I think I read once that silicon breast implants were an issue in cremations, as they don’t burn, but simply melt and stick to the bottom of the furnace, and from there are hard to remove. I don’t have a cite for this though, and don’t know if they would preemptively remove silicon ones if this was the case.
As a community pathologist who does autopsies, I can vouch for the fact that implants (breast, orthopedic etc.) are not routinely examined unless there is a significant medical question that needs to be answered and/or the implant in some way may be related to the cause of death (i.e. an infected prosthesis contributing to general sepsis). I don’t believe it’s any different for forensic autopsies for unexplained death as in Smith’s case.
We do occasionally see breast implants sent with scant attached soft tissue as surgical pathology specimens (when implants are removed/replaced for cosmetic or other reasons). You can document leakage in the case of silicone implants (there’s a characteristic tissue reaction). Still, it would be extremely unlikely to impossible that such implants would cause someone’s death (most of the claims regarding supposed systemic effects caused by leaking silicone implants have been refuted).
Anyone wanna bid on some celebrity gallstones?*
*just kidding!
Anna Nicole had implants?
Well, Godd forbidd I shouldd speak baddly of the ddeadd…