I'm halfway though 'The memory keeper's daughter' by Kim Edwards. The story takes places on a winter night in 1964; in an unexpected snow storm a doctor delivers his own son, he soon notices that his wife was actually pregrant with twins and he also becomes a father to a baby daughter. Seconds after the baby girl enters the world he realises that she suffers from downsyndrome. He makes a split second decision and asks the nurse to take his daughter to an institution.
The nurse instead of taking the baby to an instiution leaves the state and raises her as her own daughter. His wife, who is told that their daughter died at birth, never gets over the loss and the story evolves to show how this split second decision haunts the doctor for the rest of his life.
At a point in the novel where the nurse, holding the blank birth certificate in her hands, decides to declare herself the parent of the baby, I wondered how are still born babies recorded in the national statistics? Is there a birth certificae issued for them and a simultanenous death certificate? what about the ones who are born alive but only live to be a few seconds or minutes old?
The origins of the birth certificate date back to before Christ, where they served to determine the tax base and the avilability of militry manpower. A still birth is recorded seperately in a register, where both a birth and a death registery takes place at the same time.The parents receive only a death certifiacte. In the USA a foundation is currently patitioning for 'MISSing Angels Bill', its an initiative for parents who want to have a birth certificate for their still borns in addition to the death certificate. The backbone of this legiselative effort is the concern that "public health policy which issues the death certificate yet completely ignores the woman's process of birth when there is an intrauterine death."
A follow on though which is still puzzling me is what about cryonics? The people who have their bodies frozen in the hope that when medical science has advancend their bodies will be thawed and cured of the disease which killed them. In an event when this were to happen will there be an issuance of a new 'birth' certificate or will the previous death certificate be revoked? The popular urban legend that Walt Disney was cryopreserved is false; he was cremated.
Some little known facts
- No American has officially died of 'old age' since 1951, when the government eliminated that classification on death certificates
- Approximately 100,000,000,000 people (that's 100 billion!) have died since humans began.
- Eighty percent of people who die in the United States die inside of a hospital.
- In the 19th century, Egypt had such an excess of mummies that they started using them as fuel for trains engines.
-In Madagascar, dead people's families dig up the bones of the deceased bones parade them around the village during their 'famadihana' ceremony . The remains are then wrapped in a new shroud and buried again. Meanwhile, the old shroud is given to a newly married, childless couple. They use it to cover the marriage bed.
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