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Religion and Medicine: The Familial Line

Faith and family are of particular concern where death is involved. One of the biggest issues of contention among family members and within different religions is whether it’s acceptable to give up your organs or to have medical staff encourage you to do so when your family members pass away.

Religious Views

We should not require people to give something they don’t want to give. Just because someone has died physically does not mean that they no longer have rights. There are some religions which say that the body is special and it should be something treated a certain way. In some religions cutting someone’s body open after they die is very disrespectful. What if people preferred to have their body buried or to have their body burned. In many cases they do this because their religion says there is a special way to do it.

Cultural Concerns 

Other times there is a cultural reason why the body has to be buried a certain way:

1. Many cultures believe that the body has to be unharmed.
Some believe that if the body doesn’t contain all of the original parts the person’s soul cannot go on to the afterlife. It would be very unfair to that person to disrespect their beliefs or to tell them that their religion or their culture does not matter as much as someone else’s. It would also be disrespectful to the family. Even if that person has died and they no longer have the same rights as a living person, the family might be very offended if the wishes and beliefs of the family for a specific burial are not honored. 

2. Human beings are of a higher intelligence and therefore they deserve better treatment than a regular animal.
When animals die people can do what they want with them. They can donate parts to other animals or bury the body or even burn the body. But intelligent people might not want this done to them. They might not want to be cut open like an animal and have their body parts given away like they were garbage.  Some books talk about the right and wrong way to treat people and in those books cutting up somebody’s body and giving the parts away is considered the wrong way to treat people. 

3. Another reason why people should not be required to give up their organs is that it violates the rights they have when they are living.
If the government says everybody has to give their organs when they die, then the government might start to say each person has to live their life a specific way or keep their body healthy in a specific way so that they can use the parts when they die. If this happens then people will not have their freedoms. People will not be able to maybe get the tattoo they want or to eat the food they want. Once the government starts controlling what people can and cannot do to their bodies then interferes with the rights people have when they are alive and it stops them from being able to live the life that they want. 

If there are no rules specifically about how people should live their life then it doesn’t make sense financially to require everyone to give their organs when they died. The reason for this is that when somebody dies it is important to make sure that the organs they give can be used by someone else but only organs which are healthy can be used by someone else who is still alive. Even if somebody wants to give their dead body to science so that medical students can learn from the body, they might not be able to if the body is contaminated with a transferable disease. 

Some diseases can be transferred by touch. If medical students or a doctor touch the blood or certain organs inside a body that is infected they might get infected too. The amount of time it would take for medical people to review each body into tested for all types of diseases would be incredibly expensive. It would also be a requirement before anybody can be used which would mean that the government would have to increase taxes so that they could pay for medical professionals to test every dead body.

Faith Crosses

Of course, family and faith are very important but equally important is relaxing. And there are plenty of faiths that get behind gambling for fun. That said when the kids are all tucked in, the work is done for the day, and you’ve already volunteered for your church based activities, it’s time to relax. You can take advantage of this time by playing your favorite online casino games. Plenty of online casinos will reward loyal players who come back each time they want to start up a fun new game by giving them special loyalty bonuses, contributing Points each game they play toward special bonuses. So if you find a casino that you like best, you can go back to that one Casino regularly and accumulate points. With time, these points can be used to get you more money with which to gamble, entry into tournaments, and in some cases even physical gifts or vacations. Learn more here and start winning big today. 

 

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A Legacy of Faith exists to help families survive the day, plan for tomorrow, and always keep an eye on eternity. If you choose to print one of our articles in another publication (e.g., church bulletin), please give credit to the author and provide a link to the article's url. Thank you.