This essay was thoughtful, written by a physician who provides an historical, medical, ethical, cultural and legal perspective on the brain death issue.
No one should have written up a death certificate.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/01/jahi_mcmath_is_alive.html
Reblogged this on Wonders happen when you pray effectively and commented:
Truely agree
I never have offered an opinion rejecting the use of brain death as the measure of death, particularly if the brain death is determined by the appropriate tests, no spontaneous breathing, no reflexes. These brain deaths are ventilator dependent, and would have died if not for the ventilator. Even by the measures of Judaism, the Shinto and other religions that hold to the heart lungs being the measure of life, if the patient can’t breathe independently it makes sense to say they will be dead when removed from the vent.
As for persistent vegetative state, different ball game–severe disability but breathing and there I see room for some debate and some abuses based on quality of life judgments that might offend some. Rightly so. Is euthanasia appropriate for an individual who needs to be fed, clothed, washed, and has no hope of recovering those function of life? Is a helpless person a candidate for euthanasia?
Bill- the rush to donate organs is because there is usually only a small window of time between the moment that brain death occurs, and when the body fails and the organs are useless. If they aren’t retrieved in that window, there can be no transplant.
John- If there was a kidney attached to a pump so that there was circulation in the kidney and it was functioning, would you call that a human being? or is just a working part and not a human being. Please read my article. We do not recognize every functioning piece of human tissue as a human being, even if they are functioning and have circulation. Saying that every piece of human tissue that recieves circulation is a human being leads to ridiculous results.
Lee and Grisez as well as John Lizza(refences at the bottom) have refuted Truog, Miller and Shewmon.
My point is this: whatever your definition of death happens to be, you have to apply it to every situation that requires a distinction between life and death. You cant have one definition for life and death when it comes to brain death, and another definition when it comes to organ transplantation, conjoined twins, or any other situation. Defining life and death by the presence of a functioning brain works well for pretty much all situations.
Truog and Miller in fact have never defined the difference between life and death. they call it ‘integrated function’ but never say exactly what that is.
Shewmon also tried and failed to come up with a precise distinction between life and death. basically he says that when a certain number of organs are working together, human life is present. If this is your position, then you have to believe that when I transplant your heart, lungs and liver to another person, you become that person, because your integrated function is still working. His approach and that of Truog and Miller also fail to explain why conjoined twins are two people.
The bottom line is that the definition of life and death has to work for all known possible situations. The only one that does that is that human life is associated with a functioning brain.
Lizza- http://jme.bmj.com/content/37/12/743.abstract
Lee and Grisez- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22724128
Shewmon- “Mental Disconnect: ‘Physiological Decapitation’ as a Heuristic for Understanding ‘Brain Death'” (in M. Sanchez Sorondo, ed., The Signs of Death, Vatican City: Pontificia Academia Scientiarum, Scripta Varia 110, 2007, 292 333
Thanks John. Maybe the coroner’s office should have issued a “Brain Death Certificate” instead of a real “Death Certificate”.
Thanks for your thoughful reply.
first time poster here… look up D. Alan Shewmon, Peter Singer, Robert D. Truog on pubmed. They make a clear point that “brain death” is not the same thing as real death. Shewmon is brilliant – a must read – see http://brainimaging.waisman.wisc.edu/~perlman/Thukdam/Readings/J%20Med%20Philos%202001%20Shewmon.pdf See also http://jmp.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/03/02/jmp.jht009.abstract ; see http://bioethics.georgetown.edu/pcbe/reports/death/Controversies%20in%20the%20Determination%20of%20Death%20for%20the%20Web%20%282%29.pdf ; see http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/billofhealth/2013/07/17/thinking-about-brain-death/ ; see this first-hand account by Dr. Paul A. Byrne who was at Jahi’s bedside: http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/byrne/140114 . See also this about brain death and organ donation – it will shock you: http://www.truthaboutorgandonation.com/factsaboutbeinganorgandonor.html
Not to stir the pot too much, but what about extending the various definitions of brain death to include belief in Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming? Believe it or not, there are actually people who have recovered from this peculiar vegetative state. And without financial or medical assistance from Big Oil!
Oh the irony. So loss of brain function does not equal death, therefore life. So does this mean that an unborn baby/fetus begins living once its heart beats? The reality is that the definition of “life” seems open to whim which makes the definition of death debatable as well.
Now, that being said, I have no problem with the direction the family took due to the conflict of interest on the part of the hospital. However, even their own experts declared death as well. Is that enough? It all depends on whether decisions, judgments, and declarations are being made with legal aspects, versus purely medical, in mind. The rush to “donate organs” has always bothered me.
He is only describing the religious tenets of pertinent religions. There are those who disagree with your proposition that brain death is death.
And here’s what makes your assertion tenuous–so what if the person is still alive? Like alive? Sure, you might be able to argue that the body has no brain, but is the body dead–is it a corpse? NOOO it’s not a corpse. Not until the cardio pulmonary function get’s shut off, and you know it. You could easily say, very bad quality of human life.
I would agree.
There is nothing you said that is invalid, the question is–is brain death, death. Some say no.
With all due respect, he fails to articulate an alternative to defining life and death by the presence of brain function. Those who define death as the cessation of heart function or circulation usually are relying upon assumptions that just aren’t true in the modern era of medicine. I suggest that if you think that conjoined twins such as Brittney and Ashley Hensel are two people, then you are defining life as the presence of neurological function. a fuller explanation is here: https://www.facebook.com/noam.stadlan#!/notes/noam-stadlan/the-death-of-the-brain-is-the-death-of-the-person-lessons-from-the-jahi-mcmath-t/10202132615109010
To me, the real key to this case is that the hospital responsible for injuring the child is the same one trying to rush her out the door. I understand that surgery is inherently risky and sometimes things just go wrong, but the behavior of the hospital administration following the injury makes it look like they’re anxious to prevent anyone else from examining the victim.
The bizarre implication is that the agency that is most easily convinced is most accurate. Where else could you find entire global industries constrained by the agency that requires the least evidence to jump to a conclusion? Perhaps there is some complex chemical reaction with California water that results in the listed deleterious effects?
James oulter’s essay reminds me of a statement I see routinely on MSDS sheets and chemical labels: “WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.” The implication is that ‘knowledge’ is dependent on location.
There must be a generalized form of the Principle of Relativity that is applicable: “The principle of relativity is the requirement that the equations describing the laws of physics have the same form in all admissible frames of reference.”