Ninja Pajamas: An Earth-Friendly Plan for Your Dead Body
-
-
slice.mit.edu
- 1
Filed Under
Artist Jae Rhim Lee SM ’06 presented a fresh idea at a TED conference in July. Under the banner of environmental responsibility, she proposes that people change some fundamental beliefs. Her Infinity Burial Project calls on individuals to accept death and make a plan to improve the environment as we go.
She points out that contemporary death rituals like cremation and embalming put the many toxins concentrated in a body during a lifetime into either the air or soil. Her plan is to create an organized way to turn bodies into something benign and perhaps beneficial. She is developing mushrooms that can consume dead bodies, clean the toxins, and leave compost that could nourish plants.
Her costume for the presentation was the second prototype of what she calls ninja pajamas, a snug body suit impregnated with mushroom spores designed to speed up decomposition. This is personal for her—she’s already training mushrooms to eat her body by feeding them her hair and fingernail trimmings.
Watch the TED presentation for the full story; learn more her work
Lee, a 2011 TED Global Fellow, has exhibited her work in the U.S. and Europe. At MIT, she led the MIT FEMA Trailer Project, which focused on the trailers used by the federal disaster agency in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Comments
Marty, Brentwood
Tue, 11/29/2011 11:09am
What's environmentally good about her plan is that it replaces cremation, which wastes much carbon-producing fuel to incinerate a body. I object to her notion that there are "many toxins concentrated in a body", a myth of the food faddists & nutrition quacks. A couple of quotes from Quackwatch.org:
"It's an irrational concept, yet an intriguing idea, that modern life so fills us with poisons from polluted air and food additives that we need to be periodically "cleaned out" ("detoxified"). Never mind that natural chemicals in our foods are thousands of times more potent than additives, or that most Americans are healthier, live longer, and can choose from the most healthful food supply ever available."
From Harriet Hall, M.D., a retired family physician — I read nonsense about removing "toxins" all the time, but I have never seen any identification of what those "toxins" are supposed to be, much less any evidence that anything is removed by the recommended treatments, which include herbal remedies, diet regimens, bowel cleansers, massage, footbaths, electronic gadgets, you name it! Those "toxins" are as mythical as the Tooth Fairy. In fact, the Tooth Fairy makes more sense: I have some evidence for the Tooth Fairy, because, as a child, I saw the money under my pillow. I haven't seen a "toxin" yet.