Death duty – caring for the dead in the context of disaster

Abstract

An important duty for any society is to manage the deaths of its members. In most cases there are highly evolved social and cultural traditions, alongside civic procedures which render this management routine. It is only when something out of the ordinary occurs, an air accident, a tsunami, an earthquake or some other cause of multiple fatalities that the underlying moral and evaluative framework is starkly exposed. This paper begins by examining critically some of the current bioethical arguments concerning the nature of responsibility toward the dead and the implications this has for managing the dead: the “Epicurean Model.” The paper moves from a critique of this model to a consideration of an alternative ethical approach to caring for the dead in the context of disaster management.