Value and Ownership of your very own Cadaver

 It seems to me that cadavers are a useful tool in most sciences that deal even remotely with biology. In some tests, it would be arguable that cadavers are more useful than a computer simulation would be. Saving lives and, if putting a monetary value to a human life, saving money. Roach says “As calculated by the Urban Institute in 1991, [a life is] worth $2.7 million,” (126). Some people in life may not even earn $2.7 million through honest labor. It is hilarious to me that according to this calculation, these aforementioned people are worth more dead than alive. Burke and Hare thought the same thing. Although these cadavers (at least I assume) were given away in accordance with the previous tenant's free will, and although corpses are not snatched to be sold by unscrupulous characters as they were over a hundred years ago, there is still a monetary and calculable value associated with a dead body despite efforts to prevent there being one. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

A common theme of questions Ms. Roach asks her interviewees is along the lines of “How do you deal with dealing with dead bodies all day?”. And a common theme of answers is along the lines of “Dehumanization”. It seems a necessary thing to do to get through the day and, in most cases, do work for the apparent good of mankind and not simply for some morbid fascination. So is dehumanization of a corpse really a morally reprehensible ethical choice in these fields of study? Is a corpse at least part of a person and thus deserve the appropriate respect? A yes answer to the previous questions implies that someone's humanity and “person-ness” exists after they die in some part, however small, through their physical body. Even in death you have some ownership of your body and a say in what happens to it. A no answer implies the opposite. Ownership of your body is arbitrary when you are not alive to exercise it. How can you dehumanize something that is no longer human, but a shadow of what once was?