How to dispose of a dead body is carefully prescribed by religion. 
Burial is popular in the U.S., but a new book called Body Brokers makes clear that unregulated burials shunt body parts into a ghoulish trade. In a morbid sense, it’s a triumph of capitalism:
Every year human corpses meant for anatomy classes, burial, or cremation find their way into the hands of a shadowy group of entrepreneurs who profit by buying and selling human remains. While the government has controls on organs and tissue meant for transplantation, these “body brokers” capitalize on the myriad other uses for dead bodies that receive no federal oversight whatsoever: commercial seminars to introduce new medical gadgetry; medical research studies and training courses; and U.S. Army land-mine explosion tests. A single corpse used for these purposes can generate up to $10,000. [Link]The corpses — including those donated for medical research and those left unclaimed at morgues — “are cut up into parts, not unlike chickens, and distributed through a complex network of suppliers, brokers and buyers,” Cheney writes…
… she takes a tour of a factory where crushed human bone is turned into precision-tooled orthopedic tools… their loved ones are destined for, among other things, testing of anti-mine protective armor… she tells the grim story of how mishandled bodily tissue killed a young man who underwent a routine orthopedic operation using bone from a cadaver. The killer? Deadly bacteria from the bone’s donor, a young man who shot himself and went undiscovered for almost a day. [Link]
Many Hindus and Buddhists practice cremation due to hygiene and beliefs about detachment and reincarnation. However, Christian and Muslim theologians have long opposed the practice, Christians because of a belief in literal resurrection:
Many people thought cremation was at best irreligious and at worst barbaric. The strongest opponents came from the Catholic Church which banned cremation for its members in 1886, and did not finally remove the ban until the 1960s. [Link]
In an Instruction issued in 1926, the Holy Office [of the Vatican] referred to cremation as “a barbaric custom … a practice repugnant to the natural sense of reverence due to the dead.” [Link]
Cremation also has non-theological issues. In India, some object because it destroys murder evidence. Even cops are perpetrators:
… the blatant murders continue behind the high walls of police stations, as it has now happened in the case of Harjeet Singh, a Dalit youth, in the Batala area. Here the policemen even cremated his body without following proper procedure… the police force still continues to be seeped in colonial mentality. Being true inheritors of the British legacy, they think that the only way to govern the country is through the use of brutal force. [Link]
And cremation of dental fillings was recently linked to toxic emissions in the UK:
Mercury is a highly toxic heavy metal that has been linked to damage to the brain and nervous system. It is estimated that crematoria release up to 16% of the UK’s total mercury emissions. [Link]
Parsis have customarily relied on vultures, but the bird population is dwindling:
In recent years, India’s vulture population is estimated to have declined by as much as 90 percent, which has affected the rituals surrounding the mortal remains at the towers of silence. In Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay and home to more than 50,000 of India’s 76,000 Parsis, the disposal of dead bodies is becoming a problem. Gone are the days when about 70 to 100 birds would swarm at the tower of silence. Today only a few birds come. [Link]But there’s a new, secure, environmentally-friendly solution on the horizon. It’s called promession, and it freeze-dries the corpse using liquid nitrogen. Han Solo knows:… conservationists are now warning that a drug [diclofenac] used to treat sick cows is killing the scavenging vultures by the millions. They say the drug is responsible for a 97 percent decline in the species over the past decade… [Link - thanks, WGIIA]
Promession involves freezing the body and coffin to -18C then dipping it in liquid nitrogen at -196C. Both body and coffin become so brittle that by the time they are placed on a vibrating pad, they disintegrate into a powder. A metal separator then picks out metals such as artificial hips and mercury dental fillings to be put in a biodegradable coffin.
The powder is put into a small box made of potato or corn starch and placed in a shallow grave, where it will disintegrate within six to 12 months. Relatives would then be encouraged to plant a tree on the grave which would feed off the compost formed from the body. [Link]
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
— Robert Frost, ‘Fire and Ice’
