Stiff by Mary Roach Stiff by Mary Roach is a book comprised of several anecdotes of the lives of cadavers covering everything from testing the safety of cars to heart transplants. Roach’s humorous approach to this book allows the reader to understand the science behind things such as ruptured aortas and human decay.
The biological insights that I have gained from this book help me understand the world better because I now understand how humans decay after death (and how it is prevented temporarily), all of the experiments cadavers are used for, and the future of cadavers, such as head transplants for quadriplegics. However, crazy procedures such as head transplants will not be coming to the U.S. soon because another insight that I gained through reading this book is that the U.S. is so heavily regulated on …show more content…
without having other countries show that they have worked. This is applicable in the case of head transplants in which England, Italy, Germany, and the Dominican Republic are all interested in the idea while the U.S. tapped out. Furthermore, the U.S. government is corrupt and corporate greed and influence are present in congress, especially in the case of airlines. The airlines care more about money than the safety of their passengers, as described in the quote “Most airline safety improvements are assessed from a cost-benefit viewpoint” (126). This means that each human life is assigned an amount in cash, and this results in many people dying in otherwise preventable situations because adding emergency exits would mean less seats which means less revenue for the airlines, and shoulder straps would not save enough
The biological insights that I have gained from this book help me understand the world better because I now understand how humans decay after death (and how it is prevented temporarily), all of the experiments cadavers are used for, and the future of cadavers, such as head transplants for quadriplegics. However, crazy procedures such as head transplants will not be coming to the U.S. soon because another insight that I gained through reading this book is that the U.S. is so heavily regulated on …show more content…
without having other countries show that they have worked. This is applicable in the case of head transplants in which England, Italy, Germany, and the Dominican Republic are all interested in the idea while the U.S. tapped out. Furthermore, the U.S. government is corrupt and corporate greed and influence are present in congress, especially in the case of airlines. The airlines care more about money than the safety of their passengers, as described in the quote “Most airline safety improvements are assessed from a cost-benefit viewpoint” (126). This means that each human life is assigned an amount in cash, and this results in many people dying in otherwise preventable situations because adding emergency exits would mean less seats which means less revenue for the airlines, and shoulder straps would not save enough