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"Recompose, the country’s first human composting funeral home does it like this: a corpse is placed in a cylinder with organic materials, like wood chips, plant
by arkush 5y ago
"Recompose, the country’s first human composting funeral home does it like this: a corpse is placed in a cylinder with organic materials, like wood chips, plants, and straw, then heated and turned repeatedly for several weeks with a hook until it’s broken down into a nutrient-rich soil that can be delivered back to the family or used for planting."
Every time I read about using human corpses to produce soil, I recall this article:
"Grass plants bind, retain, uptake and transport infectious prions"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4449294/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4449294/
In the past I read about this or similar startup and they mentioned that they don't accept corpses of people diagnosed with prion diseases. IMHO, this is not enough. For example, a person with early CJD could die of other cause and never be diagnosed. Besides that, sporadic CJD isn't as rare as "1 per million" (still rare though).
Here is an interesting video about prion diseases that, among other things, discusses epidemiology ("1 in 7000 US deaths"):
"Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease and Other Prion Diseases - Brian Appleby, M.D."
https://youtu.be/4vyuby6gibs?t=328 https://youtu.be/4vyuby6gibs?t=328
Testing of corpses based on Protein Misfolding Cyclic Amplification (PMCA) might come in handy (if it's not too expensive). It is claimed to be very sensitive. Here is presentation by Dr. Rodrigo Morales (one of the authors of the article about prion uptake by plants that I linked above):
"Texas CWD Symposium: Pre-symptomatic prion detection"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8ZX8sHAPUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8ZX8sHAPUw
P.S.: Hopefully, this eco-burial fad wouldn't catch on. How about deep sea burials?
- yosamino 5y agoI hope when it's time for me, I can simply be flushed down the drain: > Alkaline hydrolysis is also used in the agricultural industry to sterilize animal carcasses that may pose a health hazard, because the process inactivates viruses, bacteria, and prions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_hydrolysis_(body_disposal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_hydrolysis_(body_disp...
- drdavid 5y agoI'd like a sky burial in Tibet, but that ain't gonna happen (at least not legally) unless things change.
- hh3k0 5y agoPaying your respects to the vultures? That is quite romantic. You could move to Tibet in order to have it eventually, though.
- r_singh 5y agoIt can be done in India in some places if you convert toa Zoroastrian.
- unmole 5y agoVultures are endangered in India. The Towers of Silence are having trouble dealing with bodies.
- notdang 5y agoYou would be dead and wouldn't be able to enjoy it.
- pubutil 5y agoI spent a bit of time on Recompose’s site a couple of months back out of curiosity. One of the things that stuck out to me was that there were stipulations regarding a person’s medical records. The presence of prion diseases or hepatitis were listed as reasons one could be rejected by Recompose, among other illnesses. I want to say they’re aware of the issue, but when I went back to look for this info today I couldn’t find it. So unfortunately you’ll have to take this with a grain of salt.
- pazimzadeh 5y agoI just posted this on another comment, but it turns out the Zoroastrians had a solution for this, which still allows the body to be recycled naturally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Silence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Silence