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A primary wrong
Let me acknowledge at once that, whatever my other concerns in this discussion, a disturbingly large number of individuals, predominantly parents, sense that they are victims of a betrayal of trust. In particular, those whose deceased children's bodies have been substantially eviscerated or otherwise dissected, but who were given no solid opportunity to know about or object to this, and who moreover were allowed to believe in a contrary state of affairs, have suffered a grievous wrong. Nothing said here is intended in any way to obscure, to diminish, or still less to attempt to justify that primary wrong.
My concern is rather to explore, as dispassionately as I can, the basis upon which the postmortem removal of tissue is taken to be so sensitive a matter.
An unusual introduction
It may be instructive to begin with some historical peculiarities. In their various colonial wars in India, the British hit upon a form of capital punishment that would deter the most fanatical of their religious opponents from terrorist acts. They executed their victims by tying them over the mouth of a cannon, and firing it, sending fragments of the body to the four winds and defeating all possibility of successful reincarnation of the deceased. This was non-consenting tissue distribution, rather than organ retention, but to my mind it seems to strike at some of the same anxieties.
When John F Kennedy was hit by the sniper's bullets, fragments of his brain were sprayed over the boot of his car; the famous Zapruder cine film of the incident apparently shows Jackie Kennedy leaning over the back of the car trying to retrieve them. They were collected for the presidential necropsy, but these fragments and indeed the major part of the president's brain were—for obscure reasons dear to the hearts of conspiracy theorists—somehow spirited away …