This is not a story about which person was used for the Fire Department's benefit, but whose property was used for the Fire Department's benefit.

Of course a corpse is not a person. But a corpse IS property, and it can be very valuable property-- there are bits and lumps of that corpse that can be very valuable, to the right buyer. For this reason, we have laws about who this property belongs to, and what can legally be done with it.

There is an ethical dimension to this which Our Bumbling Mudede is stubbornly ignoring. There there are many ways to obtain a corpse, after all.

Hey, wait a minute! Shouldn't this be Katie's assignment?

I agree with Charles.

Washington, like most states, has fairly detailed statutory requirements pertaining to using bodies for instructional purposes. See RCW 68.50.060-.090.

“Two, the public good must always stand above personal or family feelings.” It is this exact line of thinking that lead in a straight line to 30 million dead Ukranians in the Holdomor. Under this spell of thinking, anything can be justified.

Sorry Charles, you're wrong on this one. Yes the man was dead, yes it was just his flesh bag that was left behind, yes they were practicing a potentially life-saving technique, but his corpse belongs to his family. It is their property, and they didn't want their property being used to practice techniques without their permission, plain and simple.
Also, we're not a truly global society yet. We're still broken down into different cultures, different cultural morays, different tabboos, etc. What is good for one goose still isn't good for the goose on that continent over there. Try telling some of those tribes in the Phillipines that dig up their dead relatives every year to put clean clothes on them and spend time with them that they're foolish. I'm sure they'd think the same of you for not caring about your ancestors the way they do theirs.

They had absolutely no right, either legally or morally, to perform any sort of teaching procedure on this man’s body. Everyone dies, but only those who have signed releases can have their organs harvested, for instance, no matter how much public benefit such organs could provide. Only the deceased or his family could give permission for any use of his remains. The family is quite right to be outraged.

Fusion, dude, fusion. Where is your editor my man.

One of my own special envisionments of dystopian collectivist hell involves forcefully administered whoring out of beauty, because feelings are the greater good.

It was his body. He wanted his body to be dead.

It is still his body. Rights to that body are plausibly transferred to the state if there are no next of kin or if the next of kin do not act.

It’s fucking intubation. There are undoubtedly dolls for this. It’s a simple procedure - tube in hole, then apparently inflate a small balloon near the bottom of the tube.

The remains were not precisely defiled, but this should serve as a cautionary tale.

Not. Yours.

Eh, no. Don't used a recently deceased as a medical dummy without their express prior permission.

This may be the only time I will ever agree with Sportlandia in disagreeing with Charles, but that probably won't last long. Charles, the firefighters were wrong, and should be disciplined for the exact same reason that a woman has a right to an abortion on demand: bodily autonomy. A person's body, whether they are alive or dead is theirs, and no one else has any claim on it.

BTW: Bellingham is not even remotely a suburb of Vancouver.