Polyphagia :: Definition :: Eat :: Swallow

Do they still eat humans? " They " being other humans?
Ugh. Um, yes.

This article in the English newspaper The Telegraph  is about cannibalism in 2012,
not 1550,  the time frame of Hans Staden's True History: An Account of Cannibal Captivity in Brazil, edited and translated by Neil Whitehead and Michael Harbsmeier.  He lived to tell the tale.


In April 2012, the Huffington Post reported, the unfortunate three met the killers when they applied for a nanny position in the household of  those charged by Brazilian authorities with murder and cannibalism.  According to a CBS News report, there were other victims.  CNN also covered the story. 

Flesh, cells and protein rot.  You've seen vegetables disintegrating into piles of squashed odor and off-beat color.  You've smelled rancid milk.  You didn't eat that meat or the fish that seemed a little off. You know that wounds are risky sites.

Social niceness keeps us in the dark about the decadent reality of human flesh as it decays.
Political and business interests avoid revealing the facts of iatrogenic disease, which is a fancy name for infection that starts in medical settings -- clinics, emergency rooms, ICU, surgeries, waiting rooms, examining rooms, and all the other places where practitioners of all stripes wear latex gloves but forget to wash their hands.

Read more about staph infections and the many ways they are transmitted in medical settings.  Know the symptoms and act immediately to secure proper care.  Understand how to protect yourself from infection after or during emergency care settings, particularly in certain states, provinces, regions and countries where you'd think medical care is universally top notch, but in fact, it's not.   Not by a long shot.

The key to evaluating medical care  is not counting how many successful transplants or open heart surgeries occur, nor how many elaborate imaging and analytic processes are on offer, but knowing the incidence of staph infection acquired during brief emergency room encounters or infection associated with routine procedures will help you keep your flesh, and your life.

Does the U.S. Center for Disease Control weekly Morbidity and Mortality report include iatrogenic staph infection numbers?  Did you know common staphylococcus aureus infections are resistant to medication?

Florida  2012

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57431162-10391704/aimee-copeland-24-battles-flesh-eating-necrotizing-fasciitis-following-zip-lining-accident/

“...was zip-lining last Tuesday near her home with her friends when she suffered a cut on her calf that required 22 staples to close. She came back to the emergency room at Tanner Medical Center in Carrollton, Ga. ...”

Perhaps the staphylococcus aureus infection and subsequent necrotizing fascists commenced but after contact in the emergency room where her leg was stapled (!) together.  The cut wasn't the source of infection, but the subsequent emergency room contacts infected her. 

Florida 2012

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/article/257238/3/Starke-man-dies-after-fight-with-necrotizing-fasciitis

Florida - Tampa

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2163297/Flesh-eating-bacteria-Lisa-Maria-Carter-sues-Tampa-hospital-losing-hands-feet.html

South Carolina 2012

http://www.wtsp.com/news/health/article/255604/12/Another-woman-victim-of-flesh-eating-bacteria 

“It's caused by two usually common bacteria, streptococcus and staphylococcus aureus ...”

commonly found in hospital emergency room settings as well as on the human body.

Resources:

http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0303critic/030313illich/Frame.Illich.Ch1.html

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5953a1.htm?s_cid=mm5953a1_w

http://www.fidanoski.ca/medicine/staphylococcus-streptococcus.htm

http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/news/state/golf-outing-palm-frond-leads-to-flesh-eating-disease-necrotizing-fasciitis-for-florida-man

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18476182

Green Graves

Jessica Mitford wrote extensively about the unnecessary procedures promoted by the opportunistic funerary industry in America in her ground-breaking (hah!) 1963 book The American Way of Death, reissued in 1998.  Embalming is not necessary, a waste of resources and a pollutant, not to mention an insult to the body and memory of the beloved deceased. Check out these resources for green gravesites.

Avoid embalming unless you are a Civil War soldier whose body will be sent back home by rail express, FedEx, UPS, or military cargo flight.

Death in a Cold Climate: preview eternal chill

Experience death before you have to go there. Frostbite gave these actors a taste of the hereafter.

Reference:

*http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/death-in-a-cold-climate-1947253.html

Funeral Tourism

Join a funeral procession at Pere LaChaise Cemetery in Paris. Step into past-present-future in this vast park of glorious stone art and emotional expression.

In BonjourParis, writer Karen Henrich reports on funeral tourism, subtle and free method of experiencing local life.

Reference:

* http://www.bonjourparis.com/story/pere-lachaise-plot-funeral-cimetiere-pere-lachaise/

End of Life::Right to End of Life

YÉH√ **√HÉY 

there is no reason to be

afraid of death 

you get a new life

Celebrities  sometimes refer to whom they might have been, had they been, in a past life.

Songwriters, poets and  ordinary folks too, make off-hand comments explaining certain behavior as caused by a past life, or express a desire to do something in a future life.

Yet many people don't seem to get beyond the joking,

self-deprecating remarks to really study the self and the

experience that comes through lives and deaths, life and death.

The concept that the spirit lives beyond the body isn't new.

One way or another, it's been expressed by the world's

religions, secure in their authority won by the sword. 

Some faiths explain the soul returning to the

physical world, some would have the body reuniting with the spirit. 

Religion salvages the notion: not just here today, gone tomorrow.  

Is there a willingness to speak out, or at least mention the possibility, that the human spirit

endures?  Let's push the dialogue and share what we know about death. 

Communication about what people think and feel about life and death would help humans relax, understand their inner nature and prepare for the stages of the physical ending of

life and the advance into death.  

Myth-busting might change attitudes and release the care of the body and spirit for those approaching death, free them from the preachers, doctors and undertakers. We need to be sure that all have the right to their chosen care at end of life.  No extra permits, certificates, living wills and powers of attorneys.  The simple right to chose manner of death and care at end of life must be left to the individual and the chosen circle. 

I think we of human spirit should strive to reduce the impact of the

tangible and spend more time concentrating on the unseen world.

There is much more to see there. 

Nothing to Be Afraid Of

Julian Barnes, bless his British heart, has written a smart engaging memoir-inquiry about death and how to get there.  We need more conversations with cerebral cortex of this stripe, more musings about how others learn about death.  How to deal.  Death is our destination this time around, every time around, whether it's one life or every life.