3w ago

How im also raising my little guy

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I rewatched Mythbusters recently. It's pretty disturbing, especially in the early seasons, how often they use actual human remains for what is essentially light entertainment. Like, they'll destroy an actual human skull for shits and giggles. They had disproved the myth on setting off an airbag with a slim jim and firing it into the head of a would be car jacker, but still had to replicate the results, so just shot a slim jim into an actual human skull, cheering and laughing as it's decimated. That was an actual person's skull. How they sourced it, and where the source acquired it, who knows. I'm fairly certain there is a family somewhere though that would be mortified.
- Maybe, in the far future, I elected to have my skull sent back in time for that purpose.
  Because I totally would.
  
  Oh yeah, totally! When I die, if the mythbusters need my corpse to test a myth, they're welcome to it! If I could, I'd choose the "cleaning the decaying corpse smell out of a car" myth; remembered forever as an unforgettable stench. Or one of the giant explosions, so I could rest in pieces.
- I would be psyched as hell for my remains to be used on one of the most influential educational science shows of the era (plus like, that is a metal AF use for my skull). IDK, I know I'm not one of those people that venerates remains but even if I was, this seems like a grander memorial and contribution to science than having your remains parted out to then sit for years in a box in a closet, waiting for the physical anthro undergrads to do the "reassemble the original hands from this mixed up pile of phalanges" exercise for the umpteenth time.
  
  The key distinction here is your will. The will of these people is unkown. Their consent is unkown. If you're looking at the skulls for sale on the bone room for example, they don't even know the specific age of most of the skulls and are forced to guess within a range. If they don't even know how old they are how can they know with any certainty the circumstances of their death? Where in the world can you just find an unclaimed skull to sell? What are the chances that these skulls aren't the skulls of poor people, or otherwise disenfranchised people? It doesn't take much imagination to draw the conclusion that the ethics surrounding the buying and selling of human skulls, and then destroying them for no other reason than the momentary entertainment of of the global 1% is at the very best a grey area.
  
  I think you have an incredibly romantic view of human death, and I don't particularly want to disabuse you of that. So in that spirit, I will spare you the full gory details of what happens to donated human remains / medical cadavers.
  Full Disclosure: In my personal collection I own a number of human bones (most but decidedly not all) given to me by the friend who's bones they were. I use the fingers as a fidget toy sometimes. Also, the persecution of cannibalism is one of the great crimes of the western world. I include these to ~~amuse~~ characterize myself and, hopefully by extension, my explanations below.
  To answer your questions:
  
  And two brief points:
  
  Alright, hopefully that was less tiring to read than it was to write.
  
  I agree with you in general but cannibalism is actually bad because prion disease. Not eating other people makes sense for simply health reasons.
  I mean I still think if everyone involved consents it should be allowed, but there's a good reason we don't like it as a society.
  
  That sure is the conventional wisdom, isn't it?
  In truth there's only ever been one example of Prion disease transmission through cannibalism in humans - Kuru - a disease present in one incredibly tiny population (the Fore) in Paupa New Guinea, once. Incidentally, it was essentially only transmissible if you consumed the brain (or spine) of an infected person, which was the part reserved for young children / pregnant women. Stopping the practice of eating the brain would have effectively eliminated the disease, and conveniently the australian colonial government and local christian missionaries had recently outlawed funerary cannibalism. I'm sure that, by their reputation for extreme tolerance and cultural sensitivity, they would never exaggerate the dangers of cannibalism to back up their claims.
  Anyways, no new cases of Kuru have occurred since the Fore stopped practicing funerary cannibalism (voluntarily, once someone stopped just beating them and took the time to explain what was happening) and the disease has essentially been eradicated. So, though it's probably best not to eat another member of your species without checking to make sure they don't have parasites (and hypothetically Creutzfeldt–Jakob's disease. Although there's never been a case of it being transmitted via cannibalism, that's simply because it's vanishingly extreme rarity means it's likely never had a chance to happen), there's no particular harm that's going to happen because of it.
  
  It's almost like prion disease is rare. If you can get vCJD from eating meat of a cow that had BSE, you can very likely also get it from eating a human that had vCJD. Particularly given that it is proven to be transmissable via blood transfusion. And that cows can get BSE from eating other cows. BSE outbreaks are also pretty much the only instance in which we actually have enough data on cannibalism and the potential of disease spread.
  The reason we don't have many cases is that we don't eat people and that the diseases that you're likely to contract from doing so that don't die from cooking are very rare. Add to that that even cultures that do consume human meat generally only do so to a very limited degree (and often from people that died violently rather than disease or old age), and of course not much has been recorded.
  Since prions can occur spontaneously, it is very possible that a culture of frequently consuming human meat indiscriminately could even eventually lead to some new prion disease spreading which happens to transmit via meat consumption at an above average rate.
  
  I think I said most of that already, I'm sorry I'm not quite sure what your point is. The risk of getting a prion disease is already extremely low, and even within that the majority of CJD infections are spontaneous. That's sure the consensus in the literature, fwiw. An above average transmission rate would therefore be spectacularly unspectacular, given how few new cases would be needed to achieve that.
  
  I don't think it's an "incredibly romantic" position to wonder if it's disrespectful or scientifically necessary to wrap a human skull in pig skin and then punch it with a robotic fist until it collapses for television.
  
  Nnnno, you can hold that position independent of your feelings towards death. I am curious why you think it's unnecessary to do that, though. It's (relatively) common to use human remains for destructive testing in all manner of experiments. Is the problem that they're filming it instead of publishing the skull fracture patterns of knapped stone clubs in the journal of archeology? This really isn't any worse than, say, seeing how long it takes for human remains to fully liquefy when sealed in plastic and subjected to various conditions (more importantly, the rate at which organs decay while submerged in that soup). Is it worse than melting regions of a body with acid to test a theoretical new skin-grafting technique? Flaying their skin and muscles from the bone then macerating it to a homogeneous mixture to test for microplastic distribution rates in the 35-40 Indonesian Female demographic? Anything that happens to remains on a body farm? Those are all real examples. Thinking what they did is somehow worse than what bodies normally go through, that's the romantic view of death I was referring to.
  
  Is the problem that they're filming it instead of publishing the skull fracture patterns of knapped stone clubs in the journal of archeology?
  The problem is that "what happens when a superhuman being with a ring on punches you in the forehead" isn't exactly an important question to answer.
  This really isn't any worse than, say, seeing how long it takes for human remains to fully liquefy when sealed in plastic and subjected to various conditions (more importantly, the rate at which organs decay while submerged in that soup). Is it worse than melting regions of a body with acid to test a theoretical new skin-grafting technique? Flaying their skin and muscles from the bone then macerating it to a homogeneous mixture to test for microplastic distribution rates in the 35-40 Indonesian Female demographic?
  Again, yes. As it is not for science, it is for entertainment. Adam and Jamie are not scientists, they are special effects artists. And they are not conducting experiments, they are staging entertainment. They are not in a lab, they are in a special effects warehouse. They are not publishing their findings to Nature, they are editing them for a television audience. Mythbusters is not hard science, it is science themed entertainment. Which is fine. But these skulls belonged to real people and there is a power dynamic involved in where they come from, and who buys them, and what they're used for.
  
  You can't see the applicability in investigating the creation of surface indications of handheld objects on skin being subjected to various degrees of force, or demonstrating a method of investigating that question to the general television viewing public? Not even being slightly sarcastic or insincere here, I'm very curious what qualities qualify something as being 'science' to you. Not being in a lab excludes archaeology, and not publishing your findings to Nature excludes me the unfathomably vast majority of scientists from counting as 'scientists'.
  
  The priority on Mythbusters is always entertainment first, not science. It's not best practices, it's what is visually appealing. It's not data driven, it's shooting schedule. The skulls are not necessary tools, they are props. Adam Savage himself states that the goal is to "replicate the circumstances, then duplicate the results", or in other words, create a spectical. Which again, is fine, but is not hard science. If you can't tell the difference between hard science and television I don't know what to do for you.
  But I suspect you understand this already, and are motivated more by the excitement of eliciting a response by adopting a posture of "enlightened" objectivty, blowing the minds of us lesser beings, us superstitious cave dwellers, than by legitimately considering the finer points of profiting off of human remains or the needless destruction therof.
  
  Hard science / soft science typically refers to the distinction between disciplines like mathematics or physics vs. less quantifiable fields like sociology - it has nothing to do with the entertainment value, presentation or perceived testing rigor. nor my own personal feelings towards you or your beliefs. The difference in our opinion seems to come down to my opinion (that science education is both socially valuable and is science) vs. your opinion (that the presentation of results reflects their value and that the treatment of human remains with deference should be a primary concern of any scientific investigation involving them)? Is that broadly correct?
  
  Hard science is science that uses systematic observation, experiments and sometimes mathematics to get knowledge. In hard science, experiments have to be reproducible (if the experiment is done a second time, it will have to produce the same results as the first time).
  https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science
  My opinion is that Mythbusters is not science, but science themed entertainment, and as such, does not justify the use of human remains. I further contend that they do not treat the human remains with sufficient dignity, and that their use is disrespectful.
  It is also my opinion that you will continue to reply/argue with me until one of three conditions is met: 1. You continue to argue semantics until one of us expires from old age. 2. You whittle me down and I give up. 3. The actual heat death of the universe.
  It's looking like option #2 is the front runner. Because at this point I'd rather get my own skull crushed than to continue going back and forth with you.
- Jamie personally sourced it. That's all you need to know.
- I'm fine with that. I mean, bodies aren't really people anymore. The people part flickers out to nothingness, leaving the meat husk.
- Do they say they're actual human remains? They make realistic facsimiles specifically for testing things like they test.
  
  They do. They even go to a specific shop in one of the episodes: The Bone Room.
  The Bone Room was famous - within its niche - around the world. Featured on Mythbusters, as well as having several appearances on local news magazines, written up in articles in local and nationwide publications, and listed in guidebooks, The Bone Room was a destination for travelers and one of the must-see places for locals to bring their visiting friends and relatives.
  
  "Meemaw, I'm so glad you came to see me! ...wanna go see some human remains?"
- I personally don’t give a fuck but yea others might not like it
- I don't see what's disturbing about that. As long as the bodies come from a legal, reputable source, what's the big deal?

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