After you're dead and gone

[Return of the Silver Fox]

Many scientific breakthroughs have been achieved and lives saved following use of organs from donors.
Changes in the law have made it even more difficult to obtain tissue and consequently it is foreseeable that future advances will be slower or not happen at all.
So the question is

Should your body be made available to science/medicine once you are deceased?

Please outline why you are of your chosen opinion

 

[Buddha 3]

I think it shouldn't be a fixed thing, people should have a say about what happens after you kick the proverbial bucket.
But the way things work now are ass-backwards if you ask me. I'd say everybody is automatically a donor, unless you decide to opt out. So rather than asking for a conscious effort to become a donor, it should be a conscious effort to give up your donor-status.

 

[Gassy]

I think it shouldn't be a fixed thing, people should have a say about what happens after you kick the proverbial bucket.
But the way things work now are ass-backwards if you ask me. I'd say everybody is automatically a donor, unless you decide to opt out. So rather than asking for a conscious effort to become a donor, it should be a conscious effort to give up your donor-status.

Agree totally with what Jay says above.

 

[outkastmike]

Ever watched the movie "Soylent Green"......enough said

 

[Missy-Q]

I know I'm a complete bitch, but this is Brain-Box after all, so it's:
After you're dead and Gone

I think the current system, whereby you have to opt out of being a donor, is the one I prefer. If I were of a religion that frowned upon the dismemberment of my corpse, or had any other reason to deny my organs to science, I would opt out and be thankful I still have an option to do this.

I'm also for stem-cell research. I think that the reasons for preventing this research in the US are obsurd. I think this should also be an opt-out situation, whereby if you don't opt out (and you obviously have a right to do this) then your unwanted aborted fetus should be able to be used to help humanity, rather than being incinerated.
Yanks - Don't lecture the world on how you are pioneering medical science, and plead for global religious tolerance, when you forbid the most promising means of furthering said medical science on religious grounds.
Ridiculous!

 

[Return of the Silver Fox]

Apologies Missy, I was using 'your' informally to include all ballers but I take your point as it's the Brain Box.

I asked the question after I read the Redfern report into tissue removal from nuclear workers from the fifties to the nineties. The report included references to other industries, involved in this practice, such as coal, petroleum, asbestos, lead etc. The research has led to massive occupational health improvements, in all associated industries, through a greater understanding of how the various illnesses develop. Unfortunately much of the tissue was removed illegally and families have, understandably, asked for all associated reports to be destroyed.
Should this have been done?

 

[spangley_special]

Should be opt out, that way if it really offends you, you can opt out.

But if you're a lazy apathetic waste then at least people will benefit from your apathy

And I thought it was opt in the uk? (dunno about the states missy) Other wise I completely wasted my time filling in that registry form haha

 

[3L1TE hax]

Yup its opt in, in the UK, which as everyone has said, is silly.

 

[Return of the Silver Fox]

Yup its opt in, in the UK, which as everyone has said, is silly.

Organ donation is opt in.

In the event of your death the coroner can ask for further tests to be completed, this is a matter of law and the family cannot stop this happening.
The tests must relate to cause of death i.e. if you die in a car crash and the coroner identifies that you had a terminal illness, as it is not the cause of death, he cannot order an investigation into the cause of your illness without permission of the family.
For scientific investigations either you or your family must grant permission, the coroner cannot.
Its fair to say that a large percentage of human tissue samples gathered since the 1961 tissues act and used in past experiments, or currently in labs, was harvested illegally.
The current situation has its roots back with the 'resurrectionists' Burke and Hare.

 

[Robbo]

I was asked by my local yachting club to donate the skin surrounding my appendage so they could kit out the vast majority of their boats with sails ... I of course complied with their wishes but asked what they were gonna do with the left-overs ...