How to dispose of a dead body is carefully prescribed by religion. 
Burial is popular in the U.S., but a new book called Body Brokers makes clear that unregulated burials shunt body parts into a ghoulish trade. In a morbid sense, it’s a triumph of capitalism:
Every year human corpses meant for anatomy classes, burial, or cremation find their way into the hands of a shadowy group of entrepreneurs who profit by buying and selling human remains. While the government has controls on organs and tissue meant for transplantation, these “body brokers” capitalize on the myriad other uses for dead bodies that receive no federal oversight whatsoever: commercial seminars to introduce new medical gadgetry; medical research studies and training courses; and U.S. Army land-mine explosion tests. A single corpse used for these purposes can generate up to $10,000. [Link]The corpses — including those donated for medical research and those left unclaimed at morgues — “are cut up into parts, not unlike chickens, and distributed through a complex network of suppliers, brokers and buyers,” Cheney writes…
… she takes a tour of a factory where crushed human bone is turned into precision-tooled orthopedic tools… their loved ones are destined for, among other things, testing of anti-mine protective armor… she tells the grim story of how mishandled bodily tissue killed a young man who underwent a routine orthopedic operation using bone from a cadaver. The killer? Deadly bacteria from the bone’s donor, a young man who shot himself and went undiscovered for almost a day. [Link]
Many Hindus and Buddhists practice cremation due to hygiene and beliefs about detachment and reincarnation. However, Christian and Muslim theologians have long opposed the practice, Christians because of a belief in literal resurrection:
Many people thought cremation was at best irreligious and at worst barbaric. The strongest opponents came from the Catholic Church which banned cremation for its members in 1886, and did not finally remove the ban until the 1960s. [Link]
In an Instruction issued in 1926, the Holy Office [of the Vatican] referred to cremation as “a barbaric custom . . . a practice repugnant to the natural sense of reverence due to the dead.” [Link]
A bar in Athens has been ordered to remove a Southern Comfort poster featuring a multi-armed Durga holding bottles of whiskey (via 
