You Can't Keep Your Relatives' Skulls

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/09/why-you-cant-display-your-relatives-skull/597307/

by pshaw • 7 years ago

22 24 7 years ago

shkkmo3• 7 years ago

I wonder if these laws could be challenges under freedom of speech laws? Isn't determine what is done with your body via will a final act of speech that should be protected?

throwaway744678• 7 years ago

That seems far-fetched, at best. Freedom of speech guarantees your right to say that you want this, but does not force anyone to actually comply with it. Especially if it requires breaking a law.

shkkmo3• 7 years ago

Who said anything about forcing people to comply? I am talking about the constitutionality of certain laws that that make it illegal to comply with an individual's last wishes (when those wishes would not impinge of the freedom of others)

The point is that an act that is explicitly authorized in a will should not qualify as abuse of a corpse, not that no laws should apply to the disposal of a corpse.

If your will stipulates that your body be used to commit a criminal act, the should be prevented by the normal application of the law. Laws should not impact an individual's right for self determination of the disposal of a their body without a clear set of harms that are being ameliorated (such as in other exceptions to the prohition of prior restraint)

I am a bit surprised with the pushback here. Death rituals are incredibly personal and tied up with cultural and religious mores. It seems that freedom of religion and freedom of speech should protect such a personal and significant choice.

michaelt2• 7 years ago

So, first you gotta set up a PAC to donate skulls to politicians...

OJFord• 7 years ago

Not a chance, anything around integrity of final will and testament would be a much better fit than free speech. IANAL though, no idea where it would sit on the scale from laughed-out-of-the-room to stands-a-chance.

denton-scratch• 7 years ago

Your Last Will and Testament is (AFAICT - IANAL) not really final.

* It can be challenged on the grounds that its provisions are unlawful. Leaving all your money to your cat might be an example.

* It can apparently be challenged on the grounds that it is unfair; deceased parents leaving their children destitute by leaving all their money to a pet-care charity might be an example.

* Many wills are deliberately couched in terms that are vague or confusing; this may be in the service of avoiding inheritance taxes, but it opens the way for challenges.

* There may be evidence outside the will itself that the testator has deliberately contrived his legacy so as to avoid his debts.

As far as I can see, your will is really just an expression of your intentions. You can't enforce it (of course). If your executor egregiously violates the express intentions of deceased, they can be sued by relatives. But in general, executors seem to have considerable latitude; it is assumed that, having been appointed by the deceased, they are reasonably familiar with their intent.

Anyhow, I don't think your corpse is part of your estate; I don't think executors can dispose of it in the same way they might dispose of land, paintings and investments.

Incidentally, Freedom of Speech laws are quite rare. I don't know of any country other than the USA that has constitutional protections for speech. Certainly there is no legal protection for speech in the UK, other than the vague principle that "anything that is not forbidden by law is permitted by law".

shkkmo3• 7 years ago

Incidentally, Freedom of Speech laws are quite rare. I don't know of any country other than the USA that has constitutional protections for speech.

I think freedom of speech is almost universally considered an inalienable human right. It tends to be protected by international treaty obligations (which usually have the force of law?). Wikipedia says:

> Today, freedom of speech, or the freedom of expression, is recognised in international and regional human rights law. The right is enshrined in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights and Article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights.

Regarding the UK, the English Bill of Rights protects free speech and I believe it still has the force of law and is cited in legal cases.

wodenokoto3• 7 years ago

In a similar vein, Vsauce has a great video on the question of "Why Don't We Taxidermy Humans?"

https://youtu.be/L6S5amkCoyc

wodenokoto3• 7 years ago

It appears not to be impossible in Europe.

A common "Today I learned"-frontpager on reddit is about composer Tchaikowsky's skull, which was donated to be used in Hamlet, described on Wikipedia here:

After reading TFA I wonder how they got him deboned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Tchaikowsky#Skull

lostlogin• 7 years ago

Deboned or defleshed?

wodenokoto3• 7 years ago

Well, either way you are gonna separate bones from flesh.

But I guess deflected is the right term in this context

AllegedAlec• 7 years ago

Note on this for other readers: it's not the Tchaikowsky you may think it is. It's not the Swan Lake guy.

michaelt2• 7 years ago

I live in the UK and a few years back I looked into whether my body could be converted into one of those cool articulated skeletons on my death.

It turns out there's currently a huge oversupply of articulated skeletons in the UK, as the "Human Tissue Act 2004" [1] means (tldr) you now have to have a license to own one. An amnesty means the few institutions that have such licenses have more skeletons than they can possibly use.

Apparently as many as 8 a week are dropped off, grinning from the back seat and enjoying their day out.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Tissue_Act_2004

dr_dshiv• 7 years ago

Can't get frozen before death, either. I don't understand the legal principle there, either.

gnode• 7 years ago

The legal principle is simple: it make a person legally dead and so the intentional act is murder. Unfortunately the law doesn't recognise the concept that cryogenic preservation may not in effect kill a person in the long run.

On the other hand, if it were not regarded as killing, you may find healthy people being preserved based on oversold promises of revival from cryonics practitioners.

Perhaps the best compromise for the time being is to regard it as euthanasia, and legalise that with some sensible safeguards. I wonder whether in any countries where euthanasia is legal, opting for direct cryopreservation would be permissible.

justinclift2• 7 years ago

“I will argue with you all day long,” she told me, “that it isn’t legal in any state in the United States to reduce a human head to a skull.”

If that's the case, then how do Skulls Unlimited (US based company) do their thing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skulls_Unlimited_International

They've been around for 30+ years, and reduce human heads to skulls.

_archon_• 7 years ago

They may purchase previously-reduced skulls and profit on arbitrage.

justinclift2• 7 years ago

The wikipedia page shows part of their setup for reducing heads to skulls, using the beetles mentioned in the article.

rtkwe2• 7 years ago

They're probably working with remains that have gone through the 'donation to science' route. That line should be taken in the context of the entire article being about keeping your own relatives skulls not just about skulls period.

amriksohata• 7 years ago

Random and a bit related, Hindus crush their deads skulls and disperse the ashes in the river

JabavuAdams• 7 years ago

Dammit! I didn't know this was a thing, but now I'm thinking about it.

jfengel• 7 years ago

I'm a bit disappointed to hear that. There is a magnificent plotline on the TV show Slings and Arrows, attempting to get a friend's skull made into a prop for use as Yorick in Hamlet. That's based on real life: various skulls are passed down in the theater tradition as possibly belonging to famous actors[1]. (On the show, they ended up using a disreputable taxidermist.)

I had a vague notion that some day my own skull might become part of the properties of my own theater troupe. It's probably a very bad idea and it's more than half a joke, but it's a bit disappointing to hear that it's not really possible.

[1] http://www.borrowers.uga.edu/782717/display

You Can't Keep Your Relatives' Skulls

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