there is an incinerator a few hundred yards from my grandparents home.
the sole purpose is to burn body parts and blood samples and dispose of used syringes and such.
I’m pink therefore I’m Spam
Any portion of your body that is removed by a medical procedure is still your property. So if you have a foot removed, you can tell the doctor “Wrap that up for me. I’m taking it home.” Some people do keep items like amputated limbs for funeral purposes or items like kidney stones to preserve as souvenirs.
However, in many cases, the hospital will have you sign a release giving them the right to use or dispose of removed tissue. In most cases, the tissue, whether a hand or an appendix, will be treated as biological waste and disposed of. In some cases however the tissue may be kept and used for educational or research purposes.
There was a case a few years back where a patient had a cancerous tumor removed. This tumor was later used in an experiment which resulted in a new form of treatment being marketed. The patient found this out and unsuccessfully sued to have a share of the profits because it was “his” tumor that was used.
Ownership of amputated limbs was covered tangentially in a thread covering the sale of body parts. My contribution was about a legal case a friend studied in law school in which a man wanted to take his arm home after it was cut off, and the hospital wouldn’t permit it. When he checked into it with a lawyer, he found that one can’t own body parts, and that he did not have ownership over his limb, only disposition as to burned or buried. The law comes from a precept in common law that humans (and their parts) cannot be property (and thus cannot be slaves or sold into bondage).
Rather than dueling anecdotes, can anyone quote the relevent law on this subject?
Never attribute to an -ism anything more easily explained by common, human stupidity.
It slices, it dices…oops, wrong thread.
Back in the early 1950s, some cells were cultured from a woman’s cervical cancer tumor. These HeLa cells (named after the woman, Henrietta something, I could look it up but I don’t feel like it right now)have proven to be very adaptable. They propagate and out-breed any other human cell culture thay are in contact with. In the late 1960s it was found that approximately 80% of all the human cell cultures in laboratories across the world, despite what the researches believed, were actually HeLa cells. A highly agressive species, outcompeting all opponents in its ecological niche.
Humans have given rise to another species; it is a species of agressive micro-organism that lives in a rather specialized environment, but it is a new species none the less.
I don’t know why I am mentioning this here. I just thought it is cool, and the talk of what hospitals do with biological specimens brought it to mind.
‘This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it.’ cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. ‘Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end.’
-C. Dickens
I go to UMKC as you all know, which is right near KU Med. One time, I was with my friend, Mark, as we drove up State Line near 40th St., going to his house. There was a big, grey building with a smokestack on the top, puffing out smoke. “That’s where they teach the med students how to do autopsies.” He says to me. “Yeah, and that’s the smoke from the dead bodies being burned…” I says to him. He turned a shade of green and said “I never thought about that before…” He doesn’t drive home that way anymore.
–Tim
We are the children of the Eighties. We are not the first “lost generation” nor today’s lost generation; in fact, we think we know just where we stand - or are discovering it as we speak.
Well, if the amputee is a religious Jew, the limb would be buried the way a whole body is (except without the mourning ceremonies).
Chaim Mattis Keller
cmkeller@compuserve.com
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
Homer, you mean you haven’t see a crematorium?
There was a news item in the papers about a month ago about a teenage girl in Alberta who’d had her leg amputated pretty high up because of cancer. After the surgery, which was about a year ago, she took her leg home with her and kept it in her mom’s freezer. (Evidently, her mother is a saint.) Then, this fall, when she was ready to “let go” she had an interrment ceremony for the leg (don’t know if you would call it a funeral).