Comments on: City governments mine precious metals from cremated bodies

By: Xapiskeed

Xapiskeed — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:01:09 +0000

Hehe I rewatched Soylent Green just yesterday xD

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:29:06 +0000

The main question is: is the money collected used to offer more affordable funeral service? Or is it spent in hostess bars?
One way or another, you need family consent for this.

By: K

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 23:38:46 +0000

Lol, and it would be better to just dump it all into a hole, how?

By: Mary Witzl

Mary Witzl — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:13:15 +0000

This wouldn’t bother me if the money they made was used to defray taxes or otherwise ‘recycled’. But I would imagine that any money made from this practice does not find its way back to the public.

By: Pozo

Pozo — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:06:13 +0000

I don’t see why this would be ‘horrifying’. It seems like a quite good recycling scheme. Even though the ‘profits’ are marginal, all bits help.

Plus, the gold would give approx. 20,000 USD, palladium 3200 and silver 700. That’s not much, but still you could do some usefull work with it, and the resources are put back into the manufacturing cycle in stead of being lost.

By: John

John — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:59:49 +0000

Does this offset the cost of the cremation? Or is the family paying full price only to have someone make even more profit off of their loved one’s remains?

By: Jenn

Jenn — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:57:39 +0000

I know here in the U.S. you can ask to recover the gold from your loved ones’ teeth when they die. As for putting coins in the coffin of a person that is about to be cremated, I’m on the fence about that one. How about they just put a sign on the coffin that says “donations to the city government here”. At least then people will know what’s going to happen with their money…

By: Garrett

Garrett — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:46:42 +0000

And the number of organ donors remains low because people are worried about the use of their remains.

This is part of a much bigger problem. Organ donation rates will go up, among other things, when people feel the handling of remains is transparent. Good, bad, or otherwise, taking gold, palladium, or silver out of remains and/or selling remains without the consent of the family is far less ethical than harvesting organs from the corpses of people who did not consent.

By: The Overthinker

The Overthinker — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:44:17 +0000

Mind you, it’s an Asahi Shimbun report….

By: Timothy

Timothy — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:26:13 +0000

That’s totally messed up

By: tokyojesusfist

tokyojesusfist — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:12:29 +0000

I call it recycling!

But really, the amount of metals they are able to gather from the remains is too small. I don’t see any point in doing this, especially considering that it may or may not be very ethical.

By: Victoria

Victoria — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:53:52 +0000

There’s a name for that isn’t there?

What is now… ?

Oh yeah, that’s right; THEFT.

By: Haf

Haf — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:52:38 +0000

I like the picture of the Soylent Green plant. ^^

What about if the family would like grandma’s gold teeth for themselves?

By: Kev

Kev — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:47:46 +0000

This is horrible, this is just legalised grave robbing.

By: Eddie

Eddie — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:30:00 +0000

Shocking.