From: Ian blenkharn@ianblenkharn.com
Category: News & information
Date: 04 Apr 2008
Time: 18:06:46 +0100
Remote Name: 86.142.36.254
Can I cremate my own leg?
This is the title of a piece in todays BMJ.
How strange it is. But the author describes two cases of young men requiring amputation of a leg.
"...two patients asked for their amputated leg to be “cremated.” Is this an unreasonable request? I argue not. If you wish to be cremated on death, you may want the ashes from all of your body at your funeral.
"Unusually, the patients were both relatively young (28 and 40 years), and the indication for amputation was for chronic pain rather than vascular pathology, secondary to a childhood injury and a congenital abnormality. These young patients had made a long, difficult decision to have their troublesome leg removed rather than suffer with chronic pain and long term opioid use.
"Their youth and prognosis may cause them to stop and think about the disposal of their leg. "After such a traumatic decision process, they might want their ashes as a memorial or simply consider how they would like their amputated leg treated with dignity.
"A crematorium cannot cremate any human tissue or organs from a living person. Paradoxically, patients are within their rights to sign for their leg and take it away with them; they may bury it themselves or burn it on a bonfire. However, they cannot arrange for their leg to be cremated under their own authorisation. The hospital’s waste management service, which would normally incinerate human remains in bulk, can incinerate a limb and retain the ashes. This is the option we were able to offer the two patients....
Marlow S. Can I cremate my own leg? BMJ 2008; 336; 774. doi:10.1136/bmj.39534.654711.59
Just who is kidding who here?
Maybe the writer has got it all hopelessly wrong, or perhaps he is just having a laugh.
Maybe the hospital Waste Manager is trying to fool us all, or perhaps it is the incinerator operator?
Whichever it is, someone is telling fibs here. That the bottom ash from a merchant clinical waste incinerator could be collected and would represent the cremains of just one amputated leg, weigh around 5 or 6 kg, is surely implausible.
I'm sorry for those guys with leg pain so intense that they prefer amputation. I feel even more sorry for them now, that someone has proposed such nonsense and returned to them some bottom ash that contains well, a bit of everything!