18 July 2009

Skullduggery at crematoria

My family and I are firm believers in cremation as an appropriate body disposal method, so I was quite dismayed to encounter this report at the BBC:
In just two years, the six workers at a crematorium in Nuremberg earned more than £100,000 by selling gold teeth to a local jeweller.

Under German law, they could not be charged with theft because the gold was not said to belong to anyone after the process of cremation...

More at the link.

2 comments:

  1. Seattle SailorJuly 18, 2009 at 10:27 PM

    The father of my "gifted" classes teacher ran a crematorium. That's where she got her eyeglasses frames.

    Reduce, reuse, recycle. Right?

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  2. Cooper GreenJuly 20, 2009 at 11:01 AM

    Even promession, which to me seems even more ecologically sound than cremation, has to deal with all those non-compostable items that become part of a person over the course of a lifetime. Burying them in the ground seems the least attractive alternative. I suppose that ethical practitioners of either promession or cremation could factor in the proceeds realized from the sale of some recovered items in order to bring costs down, and thus make recyclability part of the discussion around the disposal of human remains.

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