LOSE-LOSE SYNERGIES
Historically, a hugely disproportionate fraction of cadavers
used for instruction and research have been those of poor
and indigent individuals.
From the 16th century decree of King Henry VIII that the bodies
of executed prisoners be turned over to the anatomists for
dissection, to the body snatchers who found the shallow (and
often mass) graves of paupers easier to pilfer than the granite
tombs of the wealthy, to the man whose name came to define
the practice of luring beggars into his home for a charitable
meal and then strangling them, the corpses of those born on the
wrong side of the tracks have been gracing the dissection tables
of medical students for centuries.
European governments thought the actions of these burkers
and bodysnatchers opprobrious and passed laws during the
18th and 19th century to put them out of business.
That is, they passed laws stating that anyone who died destitute
in a poorhouse or a paupers' hospital would be automatically
turned over to the dissectors. Thus the poor were spared the
ignominy of having to deal with a middleman on their way to
the dissection table. From such actions saints are made.
The true tender concern and mercy behind one of these laws
can be seen in the history of the Anatomy Act in England.
When it was first introduced in Parliament in 1829 it was
overwhelming rejected as "brutal and unfair." Three years later,
just after the
Reform Riots instigated by the ingrateful lower
classes, the same bill passed immediately by a vote of 46 to 4.
Putting touchy-feely considerations aside for the moment, the
act served to formalize the overreliance of the anatomists on
the corpses of the poor, with 99% of the corpses used for
medical education coming from poorhouses over the next
century.
So what's wrong with that? After all, who cares what happens to
their body after they're dead and, besides, it's the least those
ingrateful wretches could do after leeching off of society for all
those years.
Well, as Robert Sapolsky points out in one of the fine essays in
his collection
The Trouble With Testosterone : And Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament, the consequences were
tangible, tragic, and visited upon everybody.
Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) (formerly called crib death)
became recognized as a medical problem during the 19th century.
Parents would put healthy infants to bed only to find them dead
the next morning.
A pathologist named Paltauf attacked the problem by comparing
autopsies of SIDS infants with those of non-SIDS infants.
He quickly discovered one huge difference: the thymus glands
of the SIDS infants were much larger than those of the others.
From this he hypothesized that in the SIDS infants the thymus
was so abnormally enlarged that it pressed on their trachea during
sleep, therefore suffocating the infant.
This led to the supposed prevention of SIDS by irradiating the
throats of infants to shrink their thymuses, a fad that persisted
well into the 1950s.
Oh well, just another fad we outgrew, right?
Right next to the thymus is the thyroid gland, which regulates
growth and metabolism. It's estimated that the radiation received
by the thyroid as a side-effect of the thymus "treatments" has
led to tens of thousands of cases of thyroid cancer.
And, by the way, the causes of SIDS are still not well understood.
So what went wrong?
Remember those non-SIDS infant bodies that Paltauf examined
whose thymuses he assumed were of normal size?
They were in fact greatly atrophied by chronic stress and
deprivation since 99% of the infant bodies he inspected were
from the indigent and poor classes of society.
In other words, in this case general societal disrespect for the poor
had much greater consequences than simply having to come up
with another self-serving rationalization.
And, moreover, there's no economic rationalization whatsoever
that can be used as a justification. The wealthy quite simply
thought their bodies more sacrosanct than those of the poor even
after death, even though their religious beliefs were largely the
same as the poor. And, on top of that, the poor tended to be more
fervent in their beliefs while skepticism was largely the province
of the wealthy. If one were religious, one might even see a touch
of divine retribution in this. After all, in the New Testament (as
written rather than as warped beyond rational recognition by
the ever busy legions of apologists) you don't exactly read of J.C.
hanging around with the upper crust down at the country club.
posted by Steven Baum
8/21/2000 10:48:20 AM |
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