Unfortunately, a similar thing happens to the soul. The reason that churches and quasi-religious organizations like AA are so keen to get you to say that you “give over your soul to a higher power” is that this constitutes a verbal contract, which is fully enforceable on the ethereal plane. The soul, as everyone knows, resides in the pineal gland, and may be extracted by a combination of surgery and incantation. The business model of the soul collector is similar to that of tax collectors in ancient times—they keep up to 40% of the souls they extract, and deliver the rest unto the specified higher power.
The souls that the collector retains are negotiable in the ethereal realm as well as the occult underworld. Sometimes they’re sold for books or artifacts, or used to imbue these with power, but mostly they’re used to soften divine justice. Most deities are pragmatic enough to cleanse one damned soul in exchange for a dozen clean souls. As you can imagine, soul collectors do a lot of business with Republican Party donors. The demand for clean souls is so hot, and the market so lucrative right now, that they’re completely unobtainable outside the highest income brackets.
But that’s not so much because of the demand from the plutocracy. In fact, the vast majority of souls never make it to market—they’re hoarded by the soul collectors themselves. Suffice it to say, these are very bad people, and the reason you don’t know them by name is that they can’t be bothered committing crimes against humanity, having learned what it truly means to sin against nature.
I could say more, but I don’t want to drive anyone insane.
Hey, instead of thinking of them as profiting from death, think about the value they are creating. They are parting people out to make something of value from something worthless. It’s value creation, not sawing up grandma to make an unseemly profit.
I’d rather my body parts help out people trying to develop local hospitals in Brazil and Malaysia than improve treatments for rich assholes. Can I stipulate that my organ donations can only be used in other countries?
Also an interesting fixation this article has with exporting body parts when it has no comment on domestic for-profit body part trading.
That’s a very good idea, along with requirement to publish results in open access journals.
I’m currently finishing PhD in biomechanics, and while I didn’t do research on human tissue, colleagues at work did. The material data from testing the donated tissue is extremely important both in medicine (like atherosclerosis research, etc.) and in other areas, like creating better finite element models of human body, for example for numerical modeling of crash tests (resulting in safer cars for everyone). This for profit trading may discourage people from donating their bodies to scientific research.
I think the issue is that the donors and their families are being misled to believe their body parts won’t be sold at a profit, that it’s charity. If you donate a valuable possession to a charity in the belief it’s a nonprofit, and then they turn around and sell it at a profit, you’d be rightly ticked. This is that to the nth degree.
Yes, I think that’s half the problem. The other closely related half is that a profit model for body parts caters to those with means, not those in need, which is probably not what most donors had in mind when they signed up to be donors. These “body-part brokers” are receiving a free resource from the donors and giving it only to those who can pay, with the inevitable result that those who can pay the most will determine the price.
If they’re making one red cent over costs then that fact should be clearly disclosed to the donors. Stealing charity for profit is not okay. In fact, it’s fraud.
If that was their intent that would be one thing, but people who donate their deceased bodies are generally not doing it to make money, and these companies are taking sick and blatant advantage of that to harvest a free source for their own profit.
Bingo. Which is why this is fraud. IANAL, but I honestly don’t understand how these creeps haven’t been sued out of business. Granted most of their victims don’t have the financial resources to sue, but not everyone who donates their body to science is poor, and some are probably quite well off and high profile individuals. You’d think their families could generate the political outrage for regulating this industry.
If they were a non-profit cover costs it would be fine. But they’re profiting off charity.
