ABSTRACT
Paradoxically, the non-living body has undergone more change in the twentieth century than almost any other. Whether viewed from the perspective of commerce, politics and law, or ethics, epidemiology, and education, the dead body’s social and cultural status has altered fundamentally. Death was further made prominent by anti-smoking campaigns, environmental pollution, publicity over MDS and HIV, dire warnings about bad diet, loose sex, and lack of exercise. In most of these areas the moral power of the grim reaper’s scythe was still considered a stimulus to self-reform, despite the neo-fatalism inherent in the idea of our hour of death being governed genetically. The dead body is still exploited in the learning of new techniques. The pioneer in in vitro fertilization, Patrick Steptoe, for example, spent his lunch breaks in the morgue of the Oldham General Infirmary mastering the use of the laparoscope to facilitate the removal of ova.
