The op was basically an anti-abortion scare piece broadcast by Catholics meant to inflame. It seems to have served its purpose.
Unless everyone's a catholic and aborting their babies by the zillions, there would not be enough fetuses to generate heat, as each demands more energy to consume than it could possibly generate. The heat loss remains constant and requires other energy sources to fuel the fires to consume any and all being incinerated. That is a fact.
If you look at the numbers of aborted fetuses mentioned, you will see in total their being incinerated could not heat one hospital for one day and would not produce enough heat to generate enough electricity as to be noticeable.
It has been determined by others that incineration is the safest way for society to dispose of its medical wastes. That is a fact.
Today all large facilities with incinerators are being converted to what is being called "Combined Heat and Power," to capture waste heat and to utilize it efficiently, whether for heating or heating water. I have no idea whether this is the case of those mentioned in Great Britain, but the Covanta Marion incinerator is a waste to energy incinerator, and I see no moral outrage from those up north that send their garbage here, where its burning will poison other people's children.
But safe disposal of
their medical waste by incineration outrages them - go figure.
Anyway, they stopped the practice as soon as the BC Catholic's sensational piece did exactly what it aimed to; to make fetus disposal more problematic. Here's less sensational coverage. Please note I added hyperlinks to Covanta Marion:
Fetal tissue burning halted at power plantKGW Staff, KGW.com 3:21 p.m. PDT
April 24, 2014BROOKS, Ore -- Marion County commissioners ordered an incinerator to stop accepting boxed medical waste from British Columbia to generate electricity after learning it includes tissue from aborted fetuses.
The waste also includes amputated limbs and cancerous tissue, said British Columbia Health Ministry spokeswoman Kristy Anderson. The ministry has a contract with a firm that sends the waste to Oregon.
The county has been using the Covanta facility in Brooks to turn waste into energy for years. The county uses municipal waste from homes and businesses, plus medical waste, as incinerator fuel to produce power.
An article published in the B.C. Catholic newspaper earlier this week suggested that fetal tissue from British Columbia was included in the medical waste.
Marion County Chair Sam Brentano says if that is the case it cannot be tolerated. He immediately stopped the burning of all medical waste while the county looks into the report.
It's a practice that some find troubling.
Brooks resident Jim Worst said the whole idea makes his stomach turn.
Makes you throw up, Worst said. Makes you pretty sick.
At an emergency commission meeting Thursday morning, commissioners made a formal vote to halt the practice for now. All medical waste shipments have been halted and new procedures will be drawn up specifically to remove fetal tissue.
Brentano and Janet Carlson made the decision. Both strongly oppose abortion rights.
Bottom line: I m not going to facilitate abortion, said Brentano. It s the ultimate disrespect to innocence.
The burner company
Covanta Marion told KGW Wednesday night that while they burn the waste, it's the county that decides what trash gets incinerated.
Marion County contracts for and delivers medical waste to the facility and Covanta has no responsibility for the program, the company said. Covanta is shocked by these allegations and is discontinuing the receipt of this waste stream until we have been assured by the county that this alleged material is not being delivered to the facility.
According to its
website, it processes 550 tons per day of municipal solid waste, generating up to 13 megawatts of energy sold to Portland General Electric.
Marion County estimates that the facility processes about 700 tons of in-county medical waste each year and about 1,200 tons from elsewhere, making it a small percentage of the total waste burned. Out-of-town medical waste is charged a higher fee.
County spokeswoman Jolene Kelley said medical waste has been included in the program for some time, but the commissioners never had any indication that fetal tissue might be included.
We learned that today, she said.
Covanta Marion is believed to be the only plant generating energy from waste in Oregon.
The Environmental Protection Agency says medical waste from hospitals is generally excluded from the municipal solid waste used to generate electricity.
http://www.kgw.com/story/news/2014/07/26/12629800/
I located this thread so I could paste the following article, but first let me say than the disposition of an aborted fetus or still born child's body should only be granted through permission of the the decision making adults related to the situation. You have a right to be fully informedas to how the remains .
I was never allowed in close proximity to my son's body after he was killed by a gunshot through his brain. Why an autopsy was warranted is beyond me as the cause of death was quite obvious, there was a huge hole through his head, but this they did without permission. Being that my son's body was cremated and Washington state law prohibited my visiting with his body beforehand, I have no idea whether he was "all there", but I suspect he wasn't "all there." Hell, I don't even know if the ashes we spread were his or whether he was even cremated - for all I know they could have chopped him to bits and sent them to all the black lodges in the Northwest as some sort of dark icon or other nefarious purposes.
It's not the kind of question that one thinks to ask his funeral director, "Is he all there?" But perhaps it's time we started asking this question.
Here's an editorial that was published in my local paper today you might be interested in. What's going on where you live?
Editorial: Respect at a time of painUpdated 9:29 pm, Sunday, January 11, 2015
THE ISSUE:A Staten Island family is suing to affirm that next of kin be treated with respect.
THE STAKES:The state Legislature should step in to uphold families' rights when a loved one dies.
Common decency to the next of kin when a loved one has died seems little to ask, but a New York City family has had to take their fight to secure this courtesy all the way to the state's highest court.
After losing their 17-year-old son, Jesse, in an auto accident in 2005, Andre and Korisha Shipley of Staten Island found out in a ghastly way that the medical examiner had removed their son's brain before turning his body over a funeral home for burial.
Their discovery was only by chance, when Jesse's high school classmates were touring a morgue and saw a brain in a jar labeled with his name.
When the Shipleys objected, more insult was added to their misery. The New York City Medical Examiner's office asserted it had no obligation, legal or moral, to inform the family that Jesse's organ had been removed. Doing so when organs are taken during an autopsy would require the medical office to set up an "incredible apparatus" to record, track and retain the organs and contact families, New York City's attorney argued. Such removal of organs for medical examination is common in the office, which conducts more than 5,000 autopsies annually.
This issue is not limited to New York City. In 1989, after the Times Union reported that the Albany County coroner's office was routinely providing coronary arteries from corpses to a local pathologist studying vascular disease — without notifying next of kin — the state Health Commissioner ordered the practice stopped. He even weighed having the attorney general file charges against individuals in the Albany County coroner's office who were involved in the "unauthorized disposition of body parts."
At the time, county officials defended the practice, saying that if they asked families first, they might not get their permission. It seemed easier to not ask at all. That year, citing the Albany County cases, Onondaga County officials ended the same practice.
Medicine, science and society can benefit from such examinations of the bodies of the deceased, and living patients benefit from organ donations. But both practices can clash with deeply held spiritual beliefs. The benefits don't relieve authorities from respecting this. Certainly there are exceptions, such as in homicide investigations, but authorities should generally honor the common-law "right to sepulcher." This lets the next of kin honor the wishes of the deceased and adhere to their own religious beliefs and cultural traditions.
In the Shipley case, the city is trying to reverse lower court decisions in the family's favor, arguing no prior consent should be required. Regardless of what the Court of Appeals decides, the state Legislature should step in and resolve this sensitive issue with a statute that, within the constraints of law enforcement's needs, gives families as much say as possible and certainly requires notification, at minimum.
Behaving in a respectful and sensitive way when a family is grieving is not too much to ask, but clearly some officials need a law to impress upon them the need for common decency.
To comment:
tuletters@timesunion.com or at
http://blog.timesunion.com/opinion http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Respect-at-a-time-of-pain-6008344.php
