• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Why brain dead means really dead

Yea, I am not saying you are wrong, I have just seen many of these cases, you wanna come in a pull the plug?

I would absolutely come do it after giving them time to say goodbye. Might even help them get over their denial.
 
You go, these cases are always horrible, and your way might be best.
I would absolutely come do it after giving them time to say goodbye. Might even help them get over their denial.
 
She was just waiting to be old enough to run for office.
 
Life is so fragile and so much can go wrong. It's a miracle that we are even here at all, and that the myriad of bodily systems work together to produce this phenomenon that we call aliveness.

I find it a bit strange though that even the most religious people, when confronted with someone who is brain dead and on life support, still relate to that body as if the person is going to come back any second. Didn't their spirituality teach them that the consciousness is basically gone already? There's no one in there, I'm afraid, and despite what popular media makes it seem like, even those people who wake up from lengthy comas tend to come back not quite right.
 
As the article states, a brain dead person's heart will usually stop within 3 days of becoming brain dead. So on that alone the family has hope because it is now into the third or fourth week and the heart is still beating on its own. It's certainly an indicator of some brain stem activity.

If she is truly brain dead then she will die soon from heart failure, which is all that the mother is asking for. A brain dead person is not like someone in a coma or even in a vegetative state because in those cases the brain still regulates the body. We aren't talking about months on a respirator if she truly is brain dead.
Actually depending on how else she is supported, this is not actually accurate.

If she has her blood pressure supported and she is kept warm, three days may not be accurate.

Remember, a lot of folks who wind up brain dead are either older or have had traumatic brain injury - or have multiple massive acute insults to their body. For a brain dead person she is relatively healthy. Her obesity would have taken decades to cause major cardiovascular issue.
 
How can you diagnosis brain death properly in a medically induced coma?

I'm not a doctor but I think they hook up electrodes to the patient's scalp and if the person is alive equipment can read brain waves even in a coma. If the person is dead no waves are emitted..I think.
 
I'm not a doctor but I think they hook up electrodes to the patient's scalp and if the person is alive equipment can read brain waves even in a coma. If the person is dead no waves are emitted..I think.

It really isn't so easy.

In order to even start the evaluation for brain death, many things need to be determined. The patient needs to have a normal core temp. The patient needs to be completely of neurmosucular blocking agents. The patient has to be free of (or have very low levels) of CNS depressants. In the case "brain dead patient wakes up" that I quoted, the patient had been in a medically induced coma which usually requires major CNS depressants and possibly even neuromuscular blocking agents (paralytics). So when I quoted the poster, my question was about diagnosing the individual that was in a medically induced coma. It is imposible by our standards to diagnose brain death under those conditions. It is not imposible to BE braindead under those conditions, just would not be diagnosable until those drugs were weaned of and out of the system.

Most of the cases that I have seen where folks have woken up after "brain death" have been about not strictly following protocols.
 
Doctors are all profit motivated? They're all right?

Which ones - the ones that created this situation to begin with or the ones who created the methods by which life can be sustained artificially?

Doctors are humans - and can be wrong. No doubt, those incidences in which they are wrong are central to the family's thoughts and feelings, here. As is the fact that Doctors committed the child to the surgery and Doctors did the surgery . . . you know, it's a round Robin of Doctors this and Doctors that.

How profitability fits into all of this isn't that straightforward anyway. Cases of coma or persistent vegetative state are bad for insurers because they are expensive and there is no end in sight. While medical practice salaries are derived primarily from insurance payouts, making things bad for insurers can have repercussions for medical practitioners whose hospitals are more profitable when they have good relations with insurance groups. There's a great deal of legal fussiness over how medical conditions are defined precisely because the distribution of capital among doctors, insurers, and pharmaceuticals depends strongly on the definitions.
 
I usually get in trouble in this section but I'll give it another shot.

(CNN) -- A person who is brain dead may appear alive -- there may be a heartbeat, they may look like they're breathing, their skin may still be warm to the touch. But doctors say there is no life when brain activity ceases.

Why brain dead is really dead - CNN.com


I'm sure you've heard the story of the little girl from California who went in for minor tonsil surgery and due to complications was eventually declared "brain dead." A very sad event indeed but further complicating the tragedy is her parents don't seem to understand what brain dead means.

About 10 years ago a elderly family friend experienced a similar fate. A blood clot in his leg traveled through his body, lodged in his lungs and his wife found him passed out on the floor. He'd apparently gone about 20 minutes with no oxygen getting to his brain, was on a ventilator at the hospital and declared brain dead. He looked like he was sleeping and would even toss and turn a little but according to the doctors his brain had died and absent a miracle he could not regain consciousness. From a medical science perspective, respirators and feeding tubes only keep organs alive although the person is in all other respects deceased.

Its not a pleasant topic to discuss but Jahi McMath's passing, as tragic as it is, I think presents a teaching opportunity.

People who have been declared "brain dead" have come back to "brain alive" mode several times...

Besides, the government should stay out of this families business and let them do as they see fit with their daughter.
 
People who have been declared "brain dead" have come back to "brain alive" mode several times...

Besides, the government should stay out of this families business and let them do as they see fit with their daughter.

As I understand it, those were misdiagnosed patients. Of course, in acting upon a misdiagnosed brain death there's no correcting the mistake outside of a miracle.
 
As I understand it, those were misdiagnosed patients. Of course, in acting upon a misdiagnosed brain death there's no correcting the mistake outside of a miracle.

I'm sure it was a convenient excuse at the time lol.

"It's a miracle"

"No no, I was just wrong"

Then I suppose the doctors in this case could be "just wrong" since there is precedent.

I suppose Obamacare will make cases like this a lot more interesting....
 
I think the case in question isn't about "brain dead" or the family not understanding. There's going to be one hell of a lawsuit coming, and they need to keep the "evidence" around.
 
I think the case in question isn't about "brain dead" or the family not understanding. There's going to be one hell of a lawsuit coming, and they need to keep the "evidence" around.

That's my point. I think more than anything else the public is learning a lot about brain death due to this case.

From my own unfortunate observation of it with a family friend, brain dead people appear alive but sleeping, coughing, etc. It was an education for me at the time. They eventually took him off of the ventilator and his body quit breathing and heart stopped after a few days.
 
The word "miracle" is the single most abused word in the English language. Miracle comeback in sports, miracle finish in racing, It's a miracle we didn't get hurt, miracle weight loss, miracle cat fall from a tree, miracle achievement in science. Get the feeling there are no miracles?
 
Here's a case of someone who did recover from being brain dead but as it turned out the original diagnosis was wrong and he was only in a coma, which is not the same thing.



Doctors told his family he would never recover and asked them to consider donating his organs before his life-support machine was turned off. Instead, Steven’s father enlisted the help of private GP Julia Piper to check his son again as doctors at University Hospital in Coventry, West Midlands, agreed to let a neurologist re-examine him. Remarkably, he detected faint brain waves indicating Steven had a slim chance of recovery and medics decided to attempt to bring him out of his coma.

'Miracle recovery' of teen declared brain dead by four doctors - Telegraph

It seems as if he wasn't really declared brain dead. He was in a medically-induced coma, and drs said he wouldn't recover, so pull the plug. That indicates to me they thought he'd be a vegetable, not that he was totally brain dead. Mom got what everyone should get: a second opinion. The 2nd opinion differed.

So there was no settled "brain dead" diagnosis in that case, as in this girl's case. There is no disagreement, it seems, among different doctors that she is brain dead. There's nothing there in the head except inactive gray matter, to put it crudely.

I think the parents don't understand what "brain dead" is. They think if a machine keeps her heart pumping, that she must be alive. Her mother said as much. I saw this same thing after the O J trial, when jurors talked about the DNA and clearly didn't understand what it meant or that it was real evidence. DNA was new back then. Some people just don't understand some things. Plus, they should've been given more time than 2 weeks to let their daughter's condition sink in. It was all too sudden, I think. If the parents were paying the bill, though, that plug would've been pulled by now,IMO.
 
Well sure, but the problem is that the argument of "brain dead is really dead" doesn't account for bad diagnosis. The fact that the diagnosis could be wrong means that a brain dead diagnosis shouldn't be treated as really dead.

Or in other words, brain dead isn't really dead because brain dead isn't even necessarily brain dead.

You do what the mother in your article did: get a 2nd opinion. And a 3rd, if you want. As in the case of this young girl. There is a consensus among drs. that the girl's official diagnosis is "brain dead." Unlike in your article, where the young man was in a medically-induced coma from which the ONE DR. thought he would not be able to come back from. The 2nd dr disagreed, so they attempted to bring him back, which was successful (what kind of life he lives after suffering all that damage, I cannot say).

If three drs tell you that you have cancer, are you going to deny it and forego treatment? Or are you going to be darn sure that you have cancer? After all, just like with brain death, there are tests and graphs to show you what you have.

The parents of this girl have been in contact with several hospitals and doctors, who have reviewed the tests and records. All agree that the girl is brain dead, it seems.

There is a point at which hoping against hope that the care providers are wrong is folly. One way to test it: Tell the parents they will be responsible for the bill. We'd find out quickly just how firmly they are convinced there's a miracle coming down the road. My guess is that they'd pull the plug so fast, there wouldn't be time to write a news story about it beforehand.
 
Here's a case of someone who did recover from being brain dead but as it turned out the original diagnosis was wrong and he was only in a coma, which is not the same thing.



Doctors told his family he would never recover and asked them to consider donating his organs before his life-support machine was turned off. Instead, Steven’s father enlisted the help of private GP Julia Piper to check his son again as doctors at University Hospital in Coventry, West Midlands, agreed to let a neurologist re-examine him. Remarkably, he detected faint brain waves indicating Steven had a slim chance of recovery and medics decided to attempt to bring him out of his coma.

'Miracle recovery' of teen declared brain dead by four doctors - Telegraph

On the thread on this topic I posted links to numerous examples of people being declared brain dead that revived and even fully recovered. In each instance, that only happened because parents or relatives refused to let doctors "pull the plug."
 
You do what the mother in your article did: get a 2nd opinion. And a 3rd, if you want. As in the case of this young girl. There is a consensus among drs. that the girl's official diagnosis is "brain dead." Unlike in your article, where the young man was in a medically-induced coma from which the ONE DR. thought he would not be able to come back from. The 2nd dr disagreed, so they attempted to bring him back, which was successful (what kind of life he lives after suffering all that damage, I cannot say).

If three drs tell you that you have cancer, are you going to deny it and forego treatment? Or are you going to be darn sure that you have cancer? After all, just like with brain death, there are tests and graphs to show you what you have.

The parents of this girl have been in contact with several hospitals and doctors, who have reviewed the tests and records. All agree that the girl is brain dead, it seems.

There is a point at which hoping against hope that the care providers are wrong is folly. One way to test it: Tell the parents they will be responsible for the bill. We'd find out quickly just how firmly they are convinced there's a miracle coming down the road. My guess is that they'd pull the plug so fast, there wouldn't be time to write a news story about it beforehand.

Just because $$ would have you pull the plug on your child as $$ is apparently the decisive factor to you, I doubt few parents would see it as a $$ question.
 
I saw a medical ethicist on CNN who was asked specifically about people who've recovered from brain death. His comment was that there has never been a single documented case of a brain dead person recovering. There have been cases of misdiagnoses as in the case you cite but none where someone who's brain has stopped functioning has recovered.

Once the brain stops working the person ceases to exist. All that's left is a shell. The heart may beat and there may be some movement but the person is gone and won't ever come back. I don't fault the parents. What parent wouldn't hold out a miracle? The people advising them are another matter.

It's for this reason we shouldn't be too quick to pull the plug. At the same time, keeping someone who is brain dead on life support is a waste of time and resources, but I understand the emotional part of this issue. The parents are going to be smacked by reality sometime in the future, but in the mean time, it's their decision, and not to be disrespected.
 
There is a point at which hoping against hope that the care providers are wrong is folly. One way to test it: Tell the parents they will be responsible for the bill. We'd find out quickly just how firmly they are convinced there's a miracle coming down the road. My guess is that they'd pull the plug so fast, there wouldn't be time to write a news story about it beforehand.

There is medical consensus that Jahi McMath is brain-dead, and so this is a terribly sad situation.

But I don't think you understand that for parents, it's not about the money; it's about doing what you have to do to fight for your child. Have you ever met or heard of a parent saying, "Yes, my child has leukemia, but we really can't afford treatment, so...."?
 
It's for this reason we shouldn't be too quick to pull the plug. At the same time, keeping someone who is brain dead on life support is a waste of time and resources, but I understand the emotional part of this issue. The parents are going to be smacked by reality sometime in the future, but in the mean time, it's their decision, and not to be disrespected.

This isn't really practical. If the patient is declared dead by more traditional methods - checking pulse, resps and reflexes - can the family still demand that the hospital ventilate the patient, support their cardiovascular system and continue feeding them indefinitely?
 
Back
Top Bottom