Bodies... and capitalism

Some friends recently suggested a trip to Bodies... The Exhibition, currently showing in Atlanta. Now, I remembered hearing something about this a while back, but decided to do my own investigation. The quote from wikipedia perhaps puts it best:

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo concluded his investigation of Premier, finding "The grim reality is that Premier Exhibitions has profited from displaying the remains of individuals who may have been tortured and executed in China. Despite repeated denials, we now know that Premier itself cannot demonstrate the circumstances that led to the death of the individuals. Nor is Premier able to establish that these people consented to their remains being used in this manner. Respect for the dead and respect for the public requires that Premier do more than simply assure us that there is no reason for concern.

They have much more listed under criticisms of this particular exhibit (check out this one from npr), and you can check out any of the links for yourself.

Now, I believe strongly that to live in a capitalist society, people have to be willing to vote with their dollars, and not support financially what is against their morals. Yes, to be fair, no one knows exactly where the bodies came from, only that they were "unclaimed". Yet to me, even if one of the bodies was obtained in an immoral fashion, that is too much. I don't know, perhaps this issue strikes me more than it does most, but there seems something inherently wrong with disrespecting those who have died. I mean, even in times of war the remains of fallen soldiers were often returned to the enemy for a proper burial. The least we, as consumers, can do is require that consent is actually given to those whose bodies have been picked apart and put on display to be gawked at by thousands.

Not to get too high on my horse, as a scientist, I believe there is definite good that can come out of educating the public on human anatomy and physiology. Yet, we as a society should have boundaries on what we accept on scientific and educational merit. After all, not too long ago gross ethical violations were committed by Nazi doctors on unwilling Jewish prisoners, US doctors in the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments, etc in the name of science and medicine.

From the debate last night

Think the Obama/Biden ticket is weak on Israel? think again... the below is from the vice presidential debate last night, and I must say, Biden's remarks are damn comforting...

BIDEN: Gwen, no one in the United States Senate has been a better friend to Israel than Joe Biden. I would have never, ever joined this ticket were I not absolutely sure Barack Obama shared my passion.

But you asked a question about whether or not this administration's policy had made sense or something to that effect. It has been an abject failure, this administration's policy.

In fairness to Secretary Rice, she's trying to turn it around now in the seventh or eighth year.

Here's what the president said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, "Big mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize them." What happened? Hamas won.

When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it."

Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.

The fact of the matter is, the policy of this administration has been an abject failure.

And speaking of freedom being on the march, the only thing on the march is Iran. It's closer to a bomb. Its proxies now have a major stake in Lebanon, as well as in the Gaza Strip with Hamas.

We will change this policy with thoughtful, real, live diplomacy that understands that you must back Israel in letting them negotiate, support their negotiation, and stand with them, not insist on policies like this administration has.

For the rest of the transcript, go here: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/02/debate.transcript/index.html

Cheaters

Ok, so this is not the lightest of subject matters, but I've been thinking about this a bit lately. Now those who know me well know I have very little tolerance for cheating. If a good friend tells me they've been cheated on, I'm likely to take their word for it and even join in the badmouthing, encouraging them to leave the cheater in the cold. However, if I'm friends with the alleged cheater as well, this somehow becomes a lot more difficult a situation.

For some odd reason, we all like to think that our friends are good people and don't possess certain negative traits, cheating included. And so if the topic comes up, we're hesitant to believe it about them, and if we do, we're likely to still want to maintain the friendship. Case in point: one of my high school friends was dating a girl in a different social circle than we were (not better or worse, just different). He would often ditch times he was supposed to hang out with her to hang out with us, sometimes even lying to do so. There was also word of him being unfaithful, but since he was always faithful in and prioritized his friendship with us, we ignored everything else. Yet now that I'm older and supposedly wiser, I'm not sure what the appropriate response is/should be.

I guess my question is this: is cheating one of these inherently bad traits that should make us rethink our friendship, if we weren't directly hurt by the action? Or is cheating one of the many flaws of human nature that we should just accept if we're not the ones cheated on?