New idea in mortuary science: Dissolving bodies with lye

May 8, 2008 By NORMA LOVE, Associated Press Writer

Brad Crain, president of BioSafe Engineering, stands by one of the company's steel cylinders in Brownsburg, Ind. Monday April 7, 2008. Since they first walked the planet, humans have either buried or burned their dead. Now a new option using one of these cyclinders is generating interest: dissolving bodies. (AP Photo Michael Conroy)

(AP) -- 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.

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• nilbud - May 08, 2008
  • Rank: 3 / 5 (2)
  Wow, making death worse, now that's progress.
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• wellfeded - May 08, 2008
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  Don't dump it down the drain, make biodiesel out of it!
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• thecajun - May 08, 2008
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  If the wastewater makes it to the drinking water source (likely here in LA) then we're all cannibals.
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• DeeSmith - May 08, 2008
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  Put a recycling system on the tail end (just say 'no' to flushing caustic into the public wastewater treatment system), and this just might be the wave of the future for human remains disposal.
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• Graeme - May 09, 2008
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  At least the waste water should have been converted to a fertilizer. Another source of noxious pollution if it is tipped in the drain.
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• Zig158 - May 09, 2008
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  Didn't the mafia invent this one? A 55-gallon drum, lye and a heat source make all your bullet ridden body problems go away. What was Saddam thinking with all those mass graves?
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• zevkirsh - May 09, 2008
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  the real problem with this, is that lye is expensive at times, and when someone wants to save money they'll just throw like 4-5 boddies in the same batch and you'll have corpse stew. that's gross enough to turn people off. cremation for some reason doesn't freak people out as much, perhaps because there's no goop left over, just some dry dust.
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