Utterly tasteless: Monty Python on informed consent
“Bring out yer dead…”
Fans of Monty Python and the Holy Grail may remember this
excruciatingly funny (or excruciatingly tasteless) scene in which the collector
of dead bodies in a plague-stricken city deals with the issue of euthanasia:
"Bring out yer dead; bring out yer dead!" It serves as a textbook case of lack
of informed consent. (HT to Medical Futility blog)
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m getting better!
Large Man With Dead Body: No, you’re not, you’ll be stone dead in a
moment.
The Dead Collector: Well, I can’t take him like that. It’s against
regulations…
Michael Cook edits BioEdge, a bioethics newsletter, and MercatorNet, an on-line magazine whose focus is human dignity. He writes from Sydney, Australia.
Latest posts by Michael Cook (see all)
- How long can you put off seeing the doctor because of lockdowns? - December 3, 2021
- House of Lords debates assisted suicide—again - October 28, 2021
- Spanish government tries to restrict conscientious objection - October 28, 2021
One thought on “Utterly tasteless: Monty Python on informed consent”
Comments are closed.
More Stories
Mortality rates for American kids are rising for the first time in 50 years
US President Joe Biden is so concerned about the future of American children that he inserted a mandate for affordable...
Will Pope Francis be composted?
Will Pope Francis be composted instead of buried in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome with his predecessors? It’s unlikely. But...
The virtues and the vices of the outrageous
A Norwegian bioethicist, Anna Smajdor, recently set out a case for “Whole Body Gestational Donation” – using the wombs of...
More than 200 people have been treated with experimental CRISPR therapies
Scientists believe that CRISPR gene editing technologies will transform medicine. But how many people have been treated so far? According...
Asia-Pacific IVF market could reach US$46 billion by 2031
According to a market survey by Allied Market Research, IVF is booming in the Asia-Pacific region. The market size was...
Third global summit on human genome editing: Moving on after the He experiment
The much anticipated Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing was held in London earlier this month to explore the...
Actually, I do think this episode is very funny. I am pro-life and completely against euthanasia but I also laugh! Perhaps it is my English sense of humour but I think we stop laughing at ridiculous things at our peril.