We’re writing a paper in school about the value of human life and since it can be measured in a multitude of ways I’m going to define my question more precisely:
If you break down the human body to it’s chemical components (Carbon, Oxygen etc.) how much would it be worth? I read somewhere (many years ago) that we’re talking about a few measly dollars. How much is it really?
If you break it down into elements, it’ll be worth diddly squat. There are very few truly valuable elements, and none of them are part of the human body. If you don’t break it down, though, there are some pretty valuable compounds in there. Insulin, for instance, could be harvested from a human pancreas, and sold to a diabetic.
'Bout a dollar. If your skin was as useful as cow hide (it isn’t), then you might fetch another $3.50 for that.
Think of it like this, take a state of the art computer, now break it down into elements, the most valuable element might be gold - but there ain’t much of it.
The Koh-i-noor diamond is worth a few bucks, but the carbon it is made of is worth less than a second hand pencil.
Well technically if you could break it down into pure elements it would be worth a few hundred bucks. Analytical grade reagents don’t come cheap and there should easily be a few hundred dollars worth of metallic calcium, sodium and so forth in the human.
But in this case it’s the refining that will make you the money, not the materials. A few bucketsful of seawater would yield pretty much the same materials. Hence the reason everyone is saying that it’s worthless in elemental form. The elements on the human body aren’t in any way rare in their normal combined forms.
Excellent answers! I’ve taken them to heart and will enlighten the rest of the group!
Depends on the form of those elements. If you sell the carbon in crystalline form, it might be worth something.
As fat, minerals and water it isn’t worth much (thats all you boil down to, pretty much).
As cataracts and kidneys and liver and skin and heart and femurs and such it is worth heaps.
As collagen and insulin and pituitary extract and adrenal extracts and other biochemicals it also has considerable value. I worked in a place that had researchers working on rendering cow and sheep carcasses into biochemicals rather than fat - far, far more profitable.
Si
IIRC, real human skeletons for use by medical students can cost several thousand dollars. Actual shurnken heads can sell for tens of thousand.
Two other fine points:
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There is a difference between the concept of worth/value, and price/cost. You might want to try to refine which one they are addressing.
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A human “life” is quite a bit different from a human body. I’ve seen quite a few dead ones and I can attest to the fact that that sneaky little notion of being “alive” is remarkably different from a collection of chemical elements, even when those elements are arranged in the molecular structure that makes a human body.
Medical products harvested from dead bodies can fetch as much as $220,000 from a single cadaver.
The article also said the bones were cancerous. Hm…
Can a cancerous bone from a cadaver become “active” again when transplanted to another human being? It seems like the cancer cells would die when the donor dies.
Or do the cells somehow “hang on” after the donor’s death?
If the cells are dead, the organ is useless for transplant. Cells can be and routinely are kept alive after the total organism is dead. Yes, whatever unfortunate schmuck got those diseased bones (and possibly aslo anyone who got any organ from the same body) now faces bone cancer.
This is the exact plot of a Law & Order that was on a couple of weeks ago.
In a case obviously based on the recent harvested body parts scandal a boy dies of ovarian cancer[!] because he got a leg bone graft from a donor who had that cancer. The doctor did it because the odds against ovarian cancer metastasizing to the bones were extremely low, but it happened anyway. And the bones were harvested from the woman within two hours of her death to ensure that they would still be usable.
Nitpick: I think you mean corneas. Cataracts are hard enough to give away.
I recently read of a company that will make an artificial diamond out of a sample of your departed loeved one’s ashes. I don’t have time now to search it out but if anyone is interested …
For the OP: this might be an interesting twist on your research.