Tag: unclaimed bodies

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Death + the Economy Death + the Law Death Ethics

Death and the Economy (redux): More and More Unclaimed Bodies in County Morgues

Death in the Recession: More Bodies Left Unburied
Alison Stateman, Time Magazine (August 07, 2009)

News stories about unclaimed dead bodies, accumulating in morgues across America, continue to pop up. Death Ref Librarian Kim found this one and I decided to post it. What makes this particular Time article slightly different than the other articles I have already posted on the unclaimed body phenomena is this: it discusses the problem from coast to coast. This is not an isolated, geographically contained problem.

When unprecedented numbers of unclaimed dead bodies stop filling county morgues, then I’ll believe that the American economic recession is in retreat.

Categories
Death + the Law

No Next of Kin

A Certain Kind of DeathA Certain Kind of Death
(2003). Blue Hadaegh and Grover Babcock
New York: Wellspring. DVD / VHS documentary.
http://www.acertainkindofdeath.com

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What happens if you die and there are no friends, no family, no spouse — no one — to dispose of your body, arrange your funeral, attend to your personal effects or take care of any number of the details of your demise? Unknowingly, you kick off a chain of events, procedures and protocols that may or may not be compatible with your “last wishes,” for you enter the status known as “no next of kin.”

shoesA Certain Kind of Death is an amazing piece of documentary filmmaking. Given unprecedented access to the processes that go on behind the scenes when someone with no next of kin dies, the filmmakers present a stark and moving portrait of this “certain kind of death.”

Coincidentally, an article in the Oregonian tackled this exact subject just days after I viewed the film. A video embedded in the article shows an employee of the state medical examiner’s office explaining how he searches for next of kin.