harvest festival

Unlike Justin, I’m instinctively opposed to compulsory organ harvesting, though rationally I don’t see any clear objection to it. One expects even a minimal state to have oversight over the disposal of corpses and if the state can say that you need to put the organs in this hole rather than that one, there’s no reason why the hole concerned can’t be one excavated by surgeons inside another human being. My objection right now would be that I don’t think enough has been done to encourage more people to donate voluntarily.

What I do expect to see in future – If I’m spared, guvnor – is an organ brokerage company contributing lavishly to the expenses and hospitality of some future Health Minister and those in a position to influence him or her. In the current political environment, giving the state control over your tripes is a precursor to them handing it over to the state’s private sector cronies. Organ harvesting puts your body in play.

Anyway, it won’t affect me. I’m giving my body to Science. Though as a response to Dawkins, Hitchens and all of the shouty gang, I’m considering giving it to Superstition instead. Nowt like a nice sky burial.

Comments

[suzi finer]

...and I heard on the news today they've made an old heart new again via stem cells (hmmmm...?)

[dsquared]

I have decided to donate my body to AC Grayling, whether he wants it or not.

[Justin]

My objection right now would be that I don’t think enough has been done to encourage more people to donate voluntarily.

That's about the only sane objection I've seen so far.

[ejh]

I wish my liver to be fed to the cat. Other than that, they can do what they like with the rest.

[ajay]

"I will leave a sum in my last will for my body to be carried to Brazil and to these forests. It will be laid out in a manner secure against the possums and the vultures just as we make our chickens secure; and this great Coprophanaeus beetle will bury me. They will enter, will bury, will live on my flesh; and in the shape of their children and mine, I will escape death. No worm for me nor sordid fly, I will buzz in the dusk like a huge bumble bee. I will be many, buzz even as a swarm of motorbikes, be borne, body by flying body out into the Brazilian wilderness beneath the stars, lofted under those beautiful and un-fused elytra which we will all hold over our backs. So finally I too will shine like a violet ground beetle under a stone." -- WD Hamilton

(in the event, he was instead buried in Wytham Woods)

[Charlie Whitaker]

Why not donate it to the Tennessee Body Farm? It looks cosy.

[jamie]

Hey, giving my body to Criminology? Why not? Other things I'm considering giving my body to:

melodrama
flippancy
Manchester Dog's Home
ennui
serendipity

[Chris Williams]

I'm giving mine to Homeopathy, in a sealed jam-jar. The water will remember me, even if nobody else does.