May 9, 2008 By Norma Love The Associated Press
CONCORD, N.H. -- Since they first walked the planet, humans have either buried or burned their dead. Now a new option is generating interest -- dissolving bodies in lye and flushing the brownish, syrupy residue down the drain.
The process is called alkaline hydrolysis and was developed in this country 16 years ago to get rid of animal carcasses. It uses lye, 300-degree heat and 60 pounds of pressure per square inch to destroy bodies in big stainless-steel cylinders that are similar to pressure cookers.
No funeral homes in the U.S. -- or anywhere else in the world, as far as the equipment manufacturer knows -- offer it. In fact, only two U.S. medical centers use it on human bodies, and only on cadavers donated for research.
But because of its environmental advantages, some in the funeral industry say it could someday rival burial and cremation. "It's not often that a truly game-changing technology comes along in the funeral service," the newsletter Funeral Service Insider said in September. But "we might have gotten a hold of one."
Getting the public to accept a process that strikes some as ghastly may be the biggest challenge. Psychopaths and dictators have used acid or lye to torture or erase their victims, and legislation to make alkaline hydrolysis available to the public in New York state was branded "Hannibal Lecter's bill" in a play on the sponsor's name -- Sen. Kemp Hannon -- and the movie character's sadism.
Alkaline hydrolysis is legal in Minnesota and in New Hampshire, where a Manchester funeral director is pushing to offer it. But he has yet to line up the necessary regulatory approvals, and some New Hampshire lawmakers want to repeal the little-noticed 2006 state law legalizing it.
"We believe this process, which enables a portion of human remains to be flushed down a drain, to be undignified," said Patrick McGee, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester.
In addition to the liquid, the process leaves a dry bone residue similar in appearance and volume to cremated remains. It could be returned to the family in an urn or buried in a cemetery.
Hey, isn't this a plot point of The House on Haunted Hill -
Here is your Today in History -
May 9 1950 -
L. Ron Hubbard publishes the first edition of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. This follows on the heels of a feature article in the pulp sci-fi magazine Astounding Science Fiction. A book review in the The New Republic describes the work as "a bold and immodest mixture of complete nonsense and perfectly reasonable common sense, taken from long-acknowledged findings and disguised and distorted by a crazy, newly invented terminology." The subsequent movement goes on to become one of the scariest, most powerful pseudoreligious cults in modern history. But you didn't here this from me.
May 9 1978 -
The body of former Italian premier Aldo Moro is discovered in the back seat of a Renault. He had been kidnapped 54 days prior by the Red Brigades, who demanded the release of their incarcerated comrades. When Italian authorities refused to give in, Moro's captors killed him, but not before forcing the hostage to hold a newspaper announcing his own death.
May 9 1979 -
Northwestern University graduate student John Harris opens a cigar box left sitting on a table in the Technological Institute. The resulting blast only manages to inflict minor lacerations and burns. It is later determined to be the second explosive device fabricated by the Unabomber.
May 9 1980 -
35 people are killed in Tampa, Florida when the Liberian cargo ship Summit Venture smashes into a supporting pier of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Seven vehicles, including a Greyhound bus, topple into the water 150 feet below.
May 9 1983 -
Pope John Paul II retracts the Catholic Church's condemnation of astronomer Galileo Galilei, issued in 1633 by Pope Urban VIII. The Church had convicted the scientist of heresy, sentenced him to house arrest, and forced him to recant central scientific truths. In the end, this error only took 350 years to correct. A speedy correction by church standards.
May 9 1995 -
The CDC in Atlanta identifies a new strain of filovirus in blood samples taken from 14 disease victims in Kikwit, Zaire. Designated "Ebola," this new pathogen proves to be so tremendously virulent that the government of Zaire is forced to place the entire city of Kinshasa under quarantine in order to contain the outbreak.
We can't leave without sending a shoutout to Vito Fossella -
And so it goes
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