Would you be happy to be used as meat for human consumption when you die?

[-Heinz-]

Could the end of our lives be celebrated in this very eco-friendly way?

[????]

Wellllllll.......there's supply and then there is demand - and the two are very different.

[silverfox]

Given the taboo about cannibalism I can't really see this catching on in the near future but in a post-apocalyptic world it may be a necessity.

It would certainly introduce a new dimension to the ritualisation of death. Instead of the coffin being lowered into the ground or disappearing behind a curtain, the body is skilfully prepared by retrained butchers and put into a large pot or cauldron along with a pile of seasonal veg.

It also throws up a few questions. Would vegans' cadavers be too scrawny? Would those brought up on microwave meals and MacDonalds be regarded as the equivalent of geese force fed for foie Gras and thus shunned by some?

Also, would you need to carry a card in your wallet/purse similar to donor cards stating you wish to be eaten when you die?

[Marmora Man]

As I said in Tom Micklethwaite's thread - Soylent Green. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green

[Huguenot]

This is such a staple of popular culture and science fiction I'm not even sure the idea is shocking.

Ever seen the film 'Alive'?

[Loz]

Given that eating carnivorous isn't such a good idea then, quite obviously, WE EAT THE VEGGIES!!

[El Pibe]

"Ever seen the film 'Alive'?"

Seen it? I flew over the Andes in a plane with the Argentinian (U21) rugby team on board.

I was terrified!!!

[Huguenot]

I'm okay with it in general, but I'd prefer if you didn't (a) tell me first, or (b) look at me hungrily.

Historically it would have been a very unhealthy practice, but I suppose modern hygiene techniques make it less so?

[El Pibe]

Also isn't there a particularly high incidence of CJD among headhunter cannibals who eat the brains of their victims?

I guess most people dying of old age won't make a very nice meal. Slow casserole to make it palatable.

Cue jokes about cock-au-vin

[TE44]

Brings a whole different meaning to fighting over the kids,

[-Heinz-]

Have not heard from Tom Micklewright yet.

[maxxi]

-Heinz- Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Have not heard from Tom Micklewright yet.

He's marinating...

[Saffron]

Huguenot Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I'm okay with it in general, but I'd prefer if you

> didn't (a) tell me first, or (b) look at me

> hungrily.

>

> Historically it would have been a very unhealthy

> practice, but I suppose modern hygiene techniques

> make it less so?

No (sadly?) it doesn't. One of the problems with prion disease it that prions are not easily deconstructed (technically: denatured, as they are misfolded proteins) by sterilisation techniques. Their misfolded shape is very stable and resistant to change. Furthermore they do not require nucleic acids for replication and can replicate simply by converting the host's healthy proteins into the disfunctional shape directly. In addition, eating old/healthy dead people would not help (as opposed to eating younger/diseased dead people, who obviously died of nvCJD or similar), because prion disease is cumulative. Prions can accumulate in tissue and be passed on and further accumulated through consumption of diseased tissue from one generation to the next, until the disease manifests a clinical threshold. This is my understanding of prion disease as presented through a lecture series at King's College London in 2006.

Also here's what Wiki has to say:

Prions are generally quite resistant to proteases, heat, radiation, and formalin treatments,[56] although their infectivity can be reduced by such treatments. Effective prion decontamination relies upon protein hydrolysis or reduction or destruction of protein tertiary structure. Examples include bleach, caustic soda, and strongly acidic detergents such as LpH.[57] 134?C (274?F) for 18 minutes in a pressurized steam autoclave may not be enough to deactivate the agent of disease.[58][59] Ozone sterilization is currently being studied as a potential method for prion denature and deactivation.[60] Renaturation of a completely denatured prion to infectious status has not yet been achieved; however, partially denatured prions can be renatured to an infective status under certain artificial conditions.

So maybe if you wanted to eat dead people, try this method first:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_hydrolysis

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14114555

But seriously, who wants to eat what's leftover after that?

Although it might make a good marinade...

[Ridgley]

Oh I don't know Hugueno's tongue with sour cream and pint of bitter:)

[-Heinz-]

Saffron, really interesting, it goes some way to answering the imperfections of human disposal as it stands.

Are prions not just confined to brain and spinal cords?

I understand this subject is a bit morbid and taboo but getting over the taboo for the purpose of discussion brings up interesting stuff like your post (amongst others).

[Saffron]

-Heinz-, no, prions can contaminate lymph tissue as well as nervous tissue, making contaminated tissue extremely difficult to dissect. In addition, if dissecting tools accidentally become contaminated with prions, the prions can spread to healthy non-affected tissues such as a dissected muscle. If that muscle were then to be consumed, the prions could migrate into the host's lymph and nervous tissue where they would accumulate, convert additional prions to the misfolded shape, and (provided a clinical threshold was reached) produce the neurodegenerative sypmtoms of disease.

There may one day be an immunisation against prion disease or an antibody treatment for it, but currently there is nothing clinically available to the best of my knowledge.

From the MRC prion unit: http://www.prion.ucl.ac.uk/research/university-departments/prion-immunology/ .

Also interesting: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/217415.php .

At this point in time, I don't think evolution favours cannibalism for H sapiens.

[ianr]

Evolution can take care of itself.

[Saffron]

yup

[Burbage]

I'd be indifferent to being used as meat for human consumption. I'd not be worried about catching anything, but I'd not see any of the benefits, either.

For the above-noted health reasons, it's probably best if we keep things as they are, with at least one stage in between. Nobody is upset when ashes are scattered on the veg patch or blackberries picked at the cemetery, and neither have led to any second-hand plagues.

We shouldn't ignore the ethical considerations, though, and turning cadavers into commodities, comestible or otherwise, is fraught with ethical problems. That's not least because, when it has been done in the past, it's been done by some very nasty people, who have left a bitter heritage. Hence the outcry over the innocuous use of crematoria to heat swimming pools..

Nor the cultural issues, which are just as important. For example, our understanding of a body's ownership doesn't mesh easily with the legal understanding. In law, death turns your body into somebody else's property and, in theory, there's not much they can't do with it. In reality, however, we surround the dead with assumptions of dignity and restfulness and respect of what their wishes might have been. Things that that aren't naturally compatible with, for example, being rendered for lip-gloss or extruded for pies.

Many of those issues are created by our need for reassurance. We like to imagine that, when it comes to our turn, we'll pitch up with closed eyes, modest clothing, crossed wrists, touched-up faces and an absence of bodily fluids. We want to think we'll just be 'resting', and our death will be a smooth, painless and dignified transition. It's an unlikely ambition, but one that we go to enormous lengths to reinforce.

However implausible that aspiration, it's persistent, and I don't see any likelihood of a shift. The cool, dark earth of the grave, or the cleansing fire of the furnace are hardly matched by a microwave at a Wetherspoon's or an accountant's gut, if only because of the scriptural allusions. Even if we don't believe in God or an afterlife, we won't really know if we have a soul until it's too late, and so tend not to gamble too much where eternity is involved. When the Trump sounds for the Day of Resurrection and we're supposed to rise again, whole and clothed in flesh, anyone turning up in pieces clad in pastry is very likely to get teased.

[PeckhamRose]

Wouldn't bother me. I recollect that the tastist bits of a human body are the upper arms. Don't ask how I know or why I remembered that, I just do.

[first mate]

See "Soylent Green"- 1970's sci-fi flick. New York 2022 has undergone a massive population explosion- a new source of high protein food is found. It goes on the market with a convincing cover story, and everyone loves the taste, mmmmm soylent green!

Anyhow,unless the bodies were harvested from natural disasters and instant death wouldn't the flesh of most of the dying be contaminated with high grade pain killers and other medicines..?

[civilservant]

There is nothing intrisically dangerous about eating human flesh. The main issue is about overcoming cultural taboos (which I share).

Prions/CJD/kuru are only an issue if they are present in the cadaver to be eaten.

However they are rare, and cadavers can always be screened for infection.

Other (non-controversial) kinds of animal flesh present similar risks - for example, CJD transmission from cattle to humans.

[Saffron]

There is a hypothesis that bovine spongiform encephalophathy (BSE) entered cattle not via being fed the scrapie-infected remains of other ruminants (mainly sheep), but rather by cattle being fed contaminated bone meal derived from human bones contaminated with CJD (ie prion disease). These bones/bone meal were purportedly obtained from companies sourcing products from 3rd world countries where unidentified bones (ie, species unknown) were being scavenged and also possibly obtained from human graveyards.

Under this hypothesis, cows fed on this CJD-contaminated feedstuff became infected with prion disease manifesting as BSE. This BSE was then passed up the food chain to re-emerge in humans as new variant CJD.

If this hypothesis is true, then the human race effectively (re)infected itself with concentrated CJD via eating this twice contaminated flesh.

There are evolutionary reasons most predators eat near the opposite end of the food chain, not each other: Biomagnification. CJD is just one example. The cultural taboo has its roots in evolutionary logic.

. . .

Nevertheless, I've been saying for years that the solution to overpopulation is simply to feed the obese people to the starving people, as the number of obese people has surpassed the number of starving people some years ago. Therefore this trefoil solution solves not only the overpopulation crisis, it also addresses the obesity crisis and resolves world hunger, thus rebalancing the population as a whole.

;-)

[Sue]

I don't have a problem with this provided people aren't actually killed in order to eat them.

However I don't think I'd want to eat anybody I'd once known :))

Wouldn't mind anybody eating me - don't really care what happens to me when I'm dead, provided somebody has made damn sure that I am actually dead (and not by shooting me - not that kind of making sure) :))

ETA: I don't normally venture into the Drawing Room - am I allowed to have smileys?!

[binary_star]

No not really. Only weird people would be eating me. Don't like the idea of that.