No ‘moral certainty’ that brain death is really death: prominent Catholic ethics professor Brugger

LifeSiteNews ^ | 2/4/11 | Hilary White

[RnMomof7]

That is what we advised them :)

[Dem Guard]

I’m glad they use EEG’s. As someone that was in a como and had last rites given to me I’m glad they routinely run the test.

[GCC Catholic]

I had my “organ donor” status taken off of my driver’s license last time I renewed for this exact reason.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Very thought-provoking observation.

[floriduh voter]

Correct.

[chesley]

The exact reason that I have informed my family that I do not want to be a donor.

[wagglebee]

Pinged from Terri Dailies

[ccmay]

You mean that the heart is stopped?

No, not at all. I mean that blood flow to the brain has ceased because there is so much intracranial swelling and pressure and vasospasm (constriction of the blood vessels).

One never recovers from an interruption of blood flow to the brain of more than a few minutes.

[militant2]

This article takes issue with your contention, citing several sources.....

http://www.all.org/nav/index/heading/OQ/cat/MjA2/id/MjU4Mg/

I don’t know if there’s anything to it or not...but I’m not willing to take any chances!

Militant

[Raymann]

Actually it doesn’t at all, for one if there were a case where someone was properly certified as brain dead as I mentioned earlier you think the author (who is not mentioned) would have mentioned it?

This author is basically saying that a person can still be alive without a functional brain. I don’t know about you but personhood to me is a lot more then then simple cellular function of my big toe. I’m sure one day we’ll be able to keep a body alive when the head has been completely removed, doesn’t mean that person is alive and I don’t see a difference when it comes to brain death.

[johniegrad]

There are people who have continued to live for up to 30 days off ventilatory support who met the criteria for brain death. I attended a conference of the Catholic Medical Association last fall where several of these cases were presented.

In Catholic moral/ethical teaching, the time of death would be the time when the soul leaves the body. There is no test for this. Brain death criteria are considered a test as are other means of determining death.

If there are a dozen cases like the ones I heard about, it may seem like no big deal. None of these patients "recovered" which is a term used in this thread with no apparent definition or meaning. Nonetheless, if people can live without ventilatory support while meeting the criteria for brain death, it does call into question whether they are really dead or not.

Again, it may not seem important in the individual case but this is the beginning of the "slippery slope" of further defining death in terms of utilitarian criteria.