Brain death keeps changing

They keep changing the definition of "death"...

And note the comment in part three about "such patients include those in a persistent vegetative state"?

That is actually not true...PVS is merely lacking cortical function, and even then it is overdiagnosed 40 percent of the time...but YOU CAN"T DIAGNOSE IT until the patient has been comatose for six months...(The P means persistant...that means it's been there for awhile)...and many people with some coritical damage have seizures, or may only be alert part of the time...

I KNOW this because of my work with the retarded when I was younger...some of our patients were diagnosed as "PVS" when WE knew they responded and were alert...

But THAT doesn't really matter, because there is a trend that will soon make it "Higher brain death" then into those who don't meet the criteria for personhood...

A 1995 article gives the Catholic take on all this...or, if you prefer, here is an article from The New Yorker magazine...and here is a discussion from a medical ethics journal ....

Actually, I've had enough patients whose lives were saved by donated kidneys to believe in organ donation...and I don't mind if my family signs my organs away, as long as I am brain dead...the classic definition, that is...

Unless, of course, they will get money for the organs, then I say no way Jose...Of course, in the Philippines, that might mean my organs will go to a rich Japanese instead of a poor philippino...and of course we still have the Hippocratic oath here...

And as for the Hippocratic oath, well, Cornell is trying to change it...again...Guess what parts they left out? Yup...the parts about abortion, killing patients, and God...

Thanks for the heads up from Bioethicsblog