PART 2 - STIFF

To test automobile safety corpses are used to detect the impact certain areas of the human body can take until exceeding the threshold. There is a debate in injury prevention of whether using whole cadavers versus parts. I then visited Shanahan an injury analysts for flight 800. To determine the events he notes how intact a body is, different chemical burns, thermal burns, and “extreme water impact”. There are a lot of safety precautions possible to equip planes but the FAA won’t require them because it's not profit worthy. The military has done an assortment of ballistic exams on corpses. The first was to try and increase injury size so the opponent would be shot down but not die, it was not possible. Similar studies are currently being conducted on why people usually fall when shot. Some concluded that it is simply psychological, others say it temporarily shuts down your nervous system. Cadavers have also been used to test bullet vest and other safety gear. Ballistics disturbs many people and is looked down upon for corpse use, bomb studies are the most controversial. Exams with animals instead have been tried but they are never truly accurate. Dr. Barbet (a mad man) in 1931 used cadavers to verify the accuracy of the shroud of the Turin. Zurin a modern doctor proved all of Barbet’s theories invalid. Next I went to UCSFMC to see a beating heart cadaver operated on for organ transplant. Maintaining beating heart cadavers is an emotional stress for hospital staff. When is death existent? Before they had pre-mortuary halls till there were tale tell signs of death (rotting), many doctors tried to invent various probing test to be sure a patient was dead. In early 1907 Macdougal tried to weigh the soul leaving the corpse. The was much debate in ancient times about whether the brain or heart contains the soul. The heart when cut out of H (the patient) still beats and vigrously, many doctors who work on transplants say they have felt a presence in the operating room. Some believe our soul is within our whole body. A multitude of test to prove such theories have been attempted, all failing. Many do not agree with the brain dead classification of death. Many people who have had heart transplants swore they received their donors personality. H now looks like another cadaver but has saved 3 lives.

QOUTES:
"H has no heart, but hearless is the last thing you'd call her." (pg. 195)

"you have people with both ankles and kees damaged and they will never walk right again. It's a major disability now." (pg. 96)



When reading my text it was really making me internalize the actuality of death. I have been surrounded by it a lot but it is hard to grasp the concept that one day you will die, maybe thats because you never do it just happens ? I feel when Roach describes the deaths in detail it really creates a clear image of what could happen to my body and many times the violent reality. I am scared to die and want to experience more, but I am also SO CURIOUS. Roach discusses peoples different views of death and their ways of attempting to record life i.e spirit or soul leaving the body. All different views and approaches all seem to pinpoint down to an energy. I find this interesting because energy is the one thing we cannot measure or see, we can only know of its presences by the effects it produces. I also find that their is some validity in having such a wide spread commonality, whether its because it is partially true or because it reflects on how we think. I am trying to create my own solid opinons about death and afterlife and so on but I cannot seem to choose a concrete opinion. I feel as though everything is life and death and it is indistinguishable. I think perhaps life ends just as it seems to begin. Also reading about all the different alterations of a corpse sort of disturbs me, something tells me that they are to be respected and I seem it is a part of nature I dont want to bother. Yet I say if i needed a heart transplant would I want it ? I want to see a corpse for myself. reading about it is not enough.