Article

2005-01-06 Southeast Asia

Dead bodies pose no epidemic threat, say experts

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Posted by tipper 2005-01-06 08:17|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 "People repeat so often that bodies have to be disposed of to protect public health, that people assume it must be true," says Oliver Morgan, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Yes, best to leave them rotting so that the flies, maggots and rats will busy themselves multiplying on the corpses and not go around bothering others with the diseases they carry.

Dead bodies can release faecal bacteria into water, which can cause problems if people drink the water. But removing dead bodies will not stop this: flooded sewers and the living release also faecal bacteria, usually in closer proximity to survivors.

Yep...since both the living and the dead release fecal bacteria, it's best to leave 100,000+ dead bodies lying around so that in addition to the living, you can add the fecal bacteria of the dead to the water supply. Good thinking!

Meanwhile, mass graves cause their own problems. "Dumping them in pits is the worst possible practice," says Roger Yates, head of emergency relief for the charity Action Aid. "It's a bad thing. It happens every single time and causes enormous emotional trauma [as if rotting corpses laying around does not] later on," he told New Scientist from Chennai in southern India....snip....But people can at least be photographed, and identifying marks such as rings or tattoos recorded." In Sri Lanka, bodies are reportedly fingerprinted and photographed before mass burial, but in Indonesia, military teams are reported to be simply bulldozing bodies into pits.

ok...but wait, didn't you just say that disposing of the bodies unnecessarily uses resources that should be used working on other tasks? "This causes problems, Morgan says, when disposing of bodies takes resources away from survivors - as when hospital wards are converted into morgues, as has been reported in Sri Lanka.

soooo...in one paragraph, we are told that disposing of bodies takes away resources from surviors, that should be used setting up sanitation and clean water, and then in another paragraph in the same article, we are told that collecting, identifying, photographing, etc. apparently will not.

Make up your mind, dufas. Where do they get these logically challenged marroons?

Posted by 2b 2005-01-06 9:26:05 AM|| 2005-01-06 9:26:05 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 The thing is to know who writes the stuff before trying to understand "their" logic.

CodeBlueBlog has something to say about a medical journal that makes me wonder where we will end up if we take them at their word.

Wow! Is that The BMJ or The Nation? He's calling us (that's you and me, fellow citizens) crippled, lonely and...loveless! And he's doing that under the aegis of the BMJ, where we would expect to be reading reports of the latest brilliant British discoveries: new epidemiological data;...
Just couldn't resist.

No. He's a sports writer...AND acting editor of the British Medical Journal.

Posted by Shater Spoluper1654 2005-01-06 10:49:32 AM|| 2005-01-06 10:49:32 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 SS - it would be funny, if it wasn't so sad.

Posted by 2b 2005-01-06 1:39:44 PM|| 2005-01-06 1:39:44 PM|| Front Page Top

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