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Comment by Freak_NL | Hacker News Reader

When you die, your stake in society and anything corporeal vanishes with you. Only the living ought to have a say. Dealing with the last wishes of the deceased in a decorous manner is done mostly for the benefit of their remaining relatives and relations. After two centuries, these too are guaranteed to be dead.

If we were to let society be beholden to the wishes of the deceased indefinitely, then by now you wouldn't be able to turn a corner without running into some permanent grave or memorial. The point is that there are no relevant stakeholders remaining for these bones to be put out to sea; just a romantic notion of 'fulfilling his wishes'.

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> When you die, your stake in society and anything corporeal vanishes with you. Only the living ought to have a say.

If so, we should defy John Hunter's wishes first. Why should his property claim to stolen bones, and contracts regarding their use, matter more than Byrne's wishes? Because he was rich?

it's true that fulfilling his wishes has no point for him (at least not from our viewpoint among the living). It has a point for us, as a general phenomenon.

That man saw the writing on the wall and it turns out he was right. So we have to think about people in the same situation today, or other people. How do we respect them and their wishes when they are gone? Those who live now they see how we treat those who pass, and act and feel accordingly. A little bit of respect might go some way towards a more peaceful coexistance and a happier life while we are alive.

I think this is probably the most sensible take.

Dead people don't care what happens to their remains. Any offended relatives are likely long dead. BUT there are plenty of people alive today who'd want to know the state can be relied upon to uphold the law about what happens with their body.

The majority of dead people from two centuries ago held views and wishes for society diametrically opposed to how many live their lives now — either because of religious dogma or simply a lack of understanding of things we do understand now. Are we going to cherry-pick which of their wishes are just and which completely bonkers in hindsight?

Yes we are going to use our current values to guide our actions.

We will use our current values to define taste, justice, and cultural behaviour. We will try to look at the actions of the past with understanding and we will try to think what people in the future might think as a lens to consider our own current situation.

And we'll laugh at anyone who tries to argue philosophically about definitions of right and wrong.

It's not about arbitrary wishes anyway. It's about respecting people's remains and a decent burial, which are rather timeless values (if we look backwards in time) even if customs vary.

This is not always true. People have treated mummies and the remains of people declared as saints quite differently than regular people. Occasionally people say we should rebury for the principle of the thing but in general that doesn't seem to happen.

Personally I find the first part, ie respecting peoples remains, as being the critical thing.

I'm gonna have to point out the obvious here, that most mummies and saints weren't regular people to begin with so they continue to be treated as such.

Saints also implies catholic who feel a certain type of way about how remains should be dealt with.

The reason they can't do what he wants is that there's a legal requirement to keep the collection "complete", even though the remains were stolen.

It was stolen.

"Before Byrne could be buried, Hunter reportedly bribed one of his friends to secretly swap the corpse for dead weight and bring the body to him. Four years later Hunter put Byrne’s skeleton on display."

So a great, illegal, injustice was done and you're defending it because you didn't read the article.

What the museum should do is get a legal ruling that the remains were not legally Hunter's property so cannot be part of the collection and follow the wishes of the dead man AND what should have happened at the time.

I say put the bones to sea at once. If a legal ruling is required, let it come after whoever ghoul who would sue for breach of Hunter's testament has turned up.

All the more reason to dig up all the cemeteries in the world, use the soil for fertilizer, and build low-cost housing on the land. Nobody to complain but the dead...

That's absurd, a substantial majority of the complaints about low-cost housing come from living people.

This is common in the Netherlands were people got tired of paying the absurd costs of burial. Cremation is much more cost effective. A lot of cemetery's are closing down.

Consider that Muslims need to have an everlasting gravesite!

Then where do you plan to bury the new dead bodies?

Compost? Chuck 'em in the sea? Leave them in a forest? Let the plants and animals enjoy those nutrients. Call it the "Circle of Life burial"

https://allthatsinteresting.com/hisashi-ouchi

I guess, he was another great example of somone, whos living rights got trumped by experimental sciences and societies interest. Never let a peaceful death deter science.

>“I can’t take it anymore,” cried Ouchi. “I am not a guinea pig.”

>But at his family’s insistence, the doctors continued their experimental >treatments even as his skin began to melt from his body. Then, on Ouchi’s 59th >day in the hospital, he had a heart attack. But his family agreed that he should >be resuscitated in case of death, so the doctors revived him.

While the doctors and scientists were doing experimental things to keep him alive, it was at the instance of his family.

> Only the living ought to have a say.

This is not how society works. See wills.

He made an ought statement. It's about how society should work. You make no points in pointing out that it doesn't currently work like that.

arn't wills just the living respecting the dead wishes (abeit through laws)

I think of wills as more of a practical matter. If we got rid of them, the elderly would just give their stuff away before they died, to the same end. Oh! But what about those that die unexpectedly? It would be unfair to them since they didn't get that opportunity. And primates have an overdeveloped sense of fairness. So we have wills.

We of the now honor the wishes of the dead of the past because we want those of the future to honor ours.

Which living and how should they have a say? I think most members of society would prefer to live in a society where human remains were treated respectfully regardless of their provenance, if you asked them. Especially ones that aren’t of huge historical value.

Wow. Finally someone put an end to the discussions on organ donations. What were we thinking giving the dead a say in such matters... /s

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