When the cult known as Heaven’s Gate committed collective suicide in March 1997, they did so in a manner that reflected the uneasy relationship most people have with their bodies. The 39 cult members who ritually ingested a fatal cocktail in a hilltop mansion in Rancho Santa Fe said that their bodies were mere “containers”, and that their spirits were in a process of ascending to a UFO that was trailing behind the passing Comet Hale-Bopp. Yet, in each member’s trouser pocket, there was a five-dollar bill. This was odd: it seems a little pointless to take money with you on a journey that your body is not going on.
The scandal over the removal of organs from dead babies at Alder Hey Hospital, Liverpool, has shown that we are still confused about what it means to be human. The conduct of Dick van Velzen, the former head of pathology at Alder Hey, seems ghoulish to many; but equally macabre has been the reaction of some of the bereaved parents, who raided hospitals to scoop up the bits and pieces of long-dead children and carry them home in plastic shopping-bags, so as to go through the ritual of burying the remains for a third or fourth time.
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