Who Would Rob A Corpse?

In an article "Mother denied daughter's organs," BBC News told of Rachel Leake's problem with impending kidney failure.  Mrs. Leake's daughter wanted to donate a kidney to save her mother's life, but the daughter died of asthma before she could start the paperwork.  The BBC reported:

Despite her personal wish to help her mother, her daughter's organs went to others on the waiting list.

The bureaucracy's power to manipulate the transplant list is literally power of life and death over people whose lives depend on getting replacement organs.  In this case, what the National Health Service did is theft, pure and simple.

In English law going back many centuries, when you die, your body becomes part of your estate.  You can dispose of your body in any way you like by clearly expressing your wishes before you die.

The most reliable way to express your wishes is to write them down in a formal document called a "will," but that's not at all necessary.  Any well-attested and clearly stated wish has the same force as anything written into your will.  Courts prefer that you write your wishes down to avoid confusion and argument, but there's no doubt that the daughter wanted her mother to receive one of her kidneys.

Unfortunately for Mrs. Leake, bureaucrats generally disregard the law in favor of their own internal policies whenever they think they can get away with it.  They ignored the fact that the body was part of the daughter's estate, they ignored the fact that it was not their property.  They appropriated her remains for their own purposes based on their procedures for allocating organs.

Who would rob a corpse?  A health-care bureaucracy whose members are exempt from public criticism.

But the old-time grave robbers went about their grisly business in the dark of night, with guards posted, in secrecy and shame.  Today's corpse thieves have not even the dignity of shame; they are proud of their actions.

Which is worse - to do evil shamefacedly, knowing it's evil, or to do evil and proudly proclaim it to be good?