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Do you believe brain death is death?

Do you accept a patient pronounced "brain dead" as dead (legally and otherwise)

  • Total voters
    62
  • Poll closed .
year2late

year2late

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A patient on a mechanical ventilator has a beating heart, but has been proclaimed "brain death" according to accepted US standards.

Do you accept the patient as dead?
 
year2late said:
A patient on a mechanical ventilator has a beating heart, but has been proclaimed "brain death" according to accepted US standards.

Do you accept the patient as dead?
Click to expand...
When it comes to science so well proven, it doesn't matter what I "believe" and what anyone "believes" should have no bearing on the situation. It's a scientifically sound medical perspective.
 
Summerwind said:
When it comes to science so well proven, it doesn't matter what I "believe" and what anyone "believes" should have no bearing on the situation. It's a scientifically sound medical perspective.
Click to expand...

I agree.
 
If you can't breath or keep your heart beating without mechanical assistance and there is no chance that situation will be rectified then you're dead.
 
year2late said:
A patient on a mechanical ventilator has a beating heart, but has been proclaimed "brain death" according to accepted US standards.

Do you accept the patient as dead?
Click to expand...

Dead as a door nail
 
It's easier to realize the artificiality of the apparent "life" once you understand that it is much different from a coma and secondly, after a relatively short period of time, their organs will begin to deteriorate and fail due to their condition.
 
Does not matter what I believe.

Just in the way it doesnt matter if a diagnosed HIV patient believes he doesnt have HIV.

Or when someone with cholera believes he hasnt got cholera.
 
The German said:
Does not matter what I believe.

Just in the way it doesnt matter if a diagnosed HIV patient believes he doesnt have HIV.

Or when someone with cholera believes he hasnt got cholera.
Click to expand...

Are there other examples?
 
year2late said:
A patient on a mechanical ventilator has a beating heart, but has been proclaimed "brain death" according to accepted US standards.

Do you accept the patient as dead?
Click to expand...

Usually the brain dead never come back. I am told that ansthetized patients can probably suffer regional trauma with long term consequences. This can be prevented with local anesthesia. This indicates that the brain is not the only part of the body that feels pain.
So if you donate organs, make sure you get local anesthetics. ;)
 
joG said:
Usually the brain dead never come back. I am told that ansthetized patients can probably suffer regional trauma with long term consequences. This can be prevented with local anesthesia. This indicates that the brain is not the only part of the body that feels pain.
So if you donate organs, make sure you get local anesthetics. ;)
Click to expand...

They don't give anesthetics.

On another thread I gave links to "brain dead" people not being dead at all. Harvesting organs is big, big money business. It also is expensive to keep someone not paying on life support. So pulling the plug ends the expensive and the allows extremely lucrative transplant surgeries - a win-win money win by pulling the plug.

For one of those, where THREE doctors had certified the man as brain dead, he heard them telling his mother that he is "brain dead" and asking her permission to plug the plug and cut off the ventilator and all nutrients. And he heard the doctors away from her talking about how to best remove his organs for transplant. He had no way to communicate that he was not dead and to not cut him up. His mother refused. He revived and fully recovered.

We know someone whose father was pronounced brain-death twice - the daughter refused to sign and both times within a week she brought him home fully lucid and mobile.
 
Do you believe brain death is death?
Click to expand...

Justin-Bieber.jpg


Jury's out on that one.
 
any other type of major organ failure results in brain death... (if the failure is bad enough)

also other organs pretty much need the brain to function...

Why are we asking this question again?
 
tacomancer said:
any other type of major organ failure results in brain death... (if the failure is bad enough)

also other organs pretty much need the brain to function...

Why are we asking this question again?
Click to expand...
Just to wind you up.
 
Yes, brain death is death.
 
In lieu of the hypothetical of malpractice no doubt the patient is dead.
 
year2late said:
A patient on a mechanical ventilator has a beating heart, but has been proclaimed "brain death" according to accepted US standards.

Do you accept the patient as dead?
Click to expand...

Yes because the ''I'' is gone. The person is dead and the only thing left is the human animal body.
 
Hmm...

Yes.

Obviously the person actually has to be brain dead, no misdiagnosis or such...
 
Summerwind said:
When it comes to science so well proven, it doesn't matter what I "believe" and what anyone "believes" should have no bearing on the situation. It's a scientifically sound medical perspective.
Click to expand...

I'm usually big on supporting things that are well proved by science, but brain death and the line between brain death and a deep coma (and whether it exists at all) is not well understood because by the nature of the phenomenon it is very difficult to research.

To most historical cultures, a coma itself was basically death because they lacked the tools to reverse the process or sustain the victim.
 
Last edited:
year2late said:
A patient on a mechanical ventilator has a beating heart, but has been proclaimed "brain death" according to accepted US standards.

Do you accept the patient as dead?
Click to expand...
Of what consequence is anyone's belief? What is the purpose of this thread?
 
tacomancer said:
any other type of major organ failure results in brain death... (if the failure is bad enough)

also other organs pretty much need the brain to function...

Why are we asking this question again?
Click to expand...

Ask Texas.....;)
 
year2late said:
Ask Texas.....;)
Click to expand...

If this is to push some position on the brain-dead/pregnant chick, you would better serve your agenda focusing the discussion on the fetus. Due to the fact that is the reason she is being sustained, and not due to some notion about *her* (the mother) still being alive.

For all intense and purposes, she is merely a life support system for the fetus, regardless of where in the debate you align
 
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