06 April, 2012

In Living Color: The Dead Have Rights

In Living Color: The Dead Have Rights: I was amazed to learn this morning, from a coroner's report, that Whitney Houston was wearing a wig and dentures when she died, and that she had breast implants. I was even more amazed to realize that a government coroner's office will tell the whole world private information like this, even though it has no connection at all to what they're supposed to be investigating--the cause of her death. Once you are a dead body, you have no secrets. Not only can the state take your clothes off and dissect your body--that part's understandable--but they can broadcast anything they discover to the entire world, without having to justify specific disclosures in terms of the public's rights to know about them. Everything's out in the open, if you have the misfortune of being dead.