Team WTF- (“We Tried” a Final)

Taryn Scherven ☠ Katherine Kalmon ☠ Gabby Spence ☠ Alex Miller ☠ Patrick Sowada ☠ Macey
McConnell

Position: Dead in Favor of Vampire Cure

Arguing for Digging up our Dead Bodies and Burning our Hearts
Background:
● Story of Mercy Brown that spawned the story of Dracula
○ Family was heartbroken
○ She was a family-oriented person and wanted to save her family by whatever
means possible
● How Tuberculosis has already done a lot of damage to society (from perspective of being
in the 1800’s)
○ Everyone’s dying
○ Doctors bloodletting - didn’t have an effect (sending people to to Colorado and
away to heal them)
○ One out of every four people kicked it.
Goal: Our families are our top priority, so this disease needs to be eradicated from them by
whatever means possible. If modern medicine has yet to find a cure, then we feel that this is
another viable method of saving the rest of our family. We cannot feel the infliction of this
method and we have nothing to lose, literally. It is an option that should be taken into
consideration to prove or disprove this possible cure. SO SAVE THE FAM, DRINK THE
HEART.
Position: Digging up dead bodies and eating our hearts would not be any more harmful than
letting our family members die, to try this new “Vampire Cure.” Why let two people die when
one person can die and possibly save another life. If this new “cure” could potentially save
hundreds, maybe even thousands of lives, it would be morally wrong to not attempt this new
method.
Justification: We are already dead, we cannot feel any more pain than the next dead person. And
the vampire cure is not any less crazy than the current medical method to try cure TB. What is
more crazy, taking our heart out of our already dead body or showing up as a licensed
“professional” with a cheese grater and bleeding out people? The only counterpoint is that it's
stigmatized. Some people eat animal heart for sustenance like it's nothing, but a human heart to
possibly save a life is where we must draw the line?
Counterpoints:
● The people that came with the idea were farmers and family members, not doctors or
people in the medical field. It is purely superstition, no hard evidence, only spread by
word of mouth.
 ○ The doctors and members of the medicinal field, although more nuanced and
practiced, were just practitioners of superstition, the idea of letting out “bad
blood” to cure someone is just as likely to be as superstitious as the Vampire Cure,
the farmers who said the cure works are the same Doctors that told their peers that
letting out their blood cures an abundant amount of diseases. The only difference
is one is a normalized placebo effect and the other is stigmatized.
● This cure could leave us more cursed and unsettled than we were prior to having our
hearts removed according to other superstitions and religious perspectives.
○ Vampire Cure isn’t considered a superstition by definition, religion doesn’t have a
stake in the conversation because I don’t remember God telling people to leave
body alone In a Christian’s eyes which was the predominant religion at the time,
God was ok with cremation even, stating, “At the resurrection it will not make
any difference whether a body has been buried or cremated.” and following, “The
new body of a Christian will be radically changed and glorified body like the
body of the exalted Christ.” We can therefore assume we get the ok from God
because we’re asking to give up our own useless hearts and liver, not our soul.
● It could be morally and ethically wrong if you are okay with digging up a dead person
without their permission.
○ Morals and Ethics is never objective and are merely culturally based, Melanesians
used to eat the dead, Tibetan Buddhists have birds eat the corpses, and
Zoroastrians would wash the corpse with bull urine and put it atop a tower upon
which it’s eaten by vultures. The point is funeral rites get weird, but are justified
by different sets of cultural/ spiritual means. Preventing another life to go in the
grave with us is our justification.
● Medicine was not developed at that time so, there was nothing to go by for this situation.
○ With no other basis besides a word of mouth from a trusted source, the whole
point of this is the willingness to take the chance to save a life instead of letting
another life go.
● Rights of the dead people (Our Rights)
○ Rights of the dead were constantly challenged at this time due to the need to study
the dead for medicinal reasons, and in this case this would medicinally benefit the
people. Legal policy would change according to the shift of norms. (Yes we’re
tryna make this normal.)

Last Considerations: Think of someone close to you in your life that has passed away, (could be
a family member, a friend, or even a beloved pet) now imagine if there was something you could
have done to prevent their death from even happening… sounds like common sense to me. We
have tried the ‘science’ and ‘medicine’, but that didn’t get our families (or us) anywhere except
the grave. We are willing to sacrifice our hearts because they are no longer of use to us to save
our families.

Citations:
Lore Video Link
Tuberculosis
How Dead People Have More Rights Than You
Mercy Brown
Funeral Rights GET WEIRD
John 5:28-29
1 Corinthians 15:35-54
Philippians 3:20-21
Catholicism is Popular, Superscript 71