[ExI] Cryonics is getting weird

David Lubkin lubkin at unreasonable.com
Tue May 18 19:47:06 UTC 2010


Spike wrote:

> > ... For example if a Christian dies in an explosion in
> > Afghanistan and the only remains that are recovered are his
> > foot, they will send his foot to the US and hold a funeral
> > for and bury his foot...
>
>What if the foot is amputated for being an unbeliever, and the infidel
>lives.  Then what do they do with the infidel's foot?  Make a foot stool?

Israel has a team of Orthodox Jewish volunteers who scour battlefields
for body parts after the fighting's over. They sort out who's who,
presumably by DNA, for burial purposes. Ritually, only a Jew can be
buried in a Jewish cemetery. (This might be in retaliation for the
centuries of Jews being forbidden use of the (Christian) town cemetery;
I'm not sure which came first.)

Before DNA, they'd use forensic clues and SWAGs to distinguish
Jewish body parts from non-Jewish. Each set of parts that appears to
be a single person is buried together, regardless of how small the
set is. If a ritual serial killer is caught with a jar of right thumbs, each
one gets a full funeral service.

I have a friend who is a VP of an investment house by day and
Orthodox rabbi by night who is receptive to odd questions. I could ask
him what they do with severed or surgically removed body parts of
those still living. Lemme know if you have any other odd questions,
so I can ask them together.

I do know that maternity hospitals in Israel throw out afterbirths.
I know this personally. I had several volunteer jobs during the Yom
Kippur War. The coolest was in the ER of an evac hospital, taking
wounded soldiers off to radiology or the OR. (It was humbling to
hear them talking to each other about which of their wounds they
had to tell their family about and which they would conceal, lest they
worry.) The least pleasant was filling in for reservists whose civilian
job was garbage crew, and the least pleasant part of that was when
we picked up the maternity hospital's trash.

While we're talking about cryonics and religion: I have made the
argument for years that for any religion that views medical care as
appropriate, life as sacred, and suicide a sin (virtually all of them),
it is incumbent on any good religionist to be signed up for cryonics.
So far only atheists have agreed with me....


-- David.




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