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The problem with this is that anyone (or their relatives) can dislike anything. I don't like pesto, so I don't think anyone else should eat it because that woul

• burkaman 3y ago
  We have cultural values about respecting the dead and respecting bodily autonomy. If you asked me not to eat pesto at your relative's funeral, or not to use the corpse's hand to stir my pesto pot, I wouldn't, even though I know nobody would be harmed and it's just about your feelings. If you asked me not to eat pesto on a normal day in your house, again I wouldn't, because that's a small sacrifice to make you feel better, and I value being a nice person. If you asked me not to do it in my own home when you aren't around, I would, because that crosses a boundary where doing what you ask is no longer worth sacrificing my own freedom. In this particular case, the doctors and anthropologists want to research brains. They know that if they ask "may I harvest your relative's brain in order to prove its inferiority to the white race" the answer will be "no". Taking the brain anyway is therefore wrong - but does the utility of this research outweigh the moral issue of non-consent? No, it doesn't. There are some hypothetical scenarios where taking brains without consent would be worth it, maybe during a prion pandemic or something, but this is not one of them. It's not like you'll never get consent - plenty of people are willing to happily donate their bodies for research, I probably would be if anyone asked.