Category: News and Views
I'm not sure if this should go under religion, let's talk, health or news, but since it's a news article, I'll put it here. Feel free to move it.
I just saw this on a friends page on Facebook. The original link can be found at
http://www.alternet.org/belief/146007/when_are_you_dead_science_just_made_the_work_of_religion_a_bit_more_difficult/?page=entire
Going to that site will give you links to other things. But incase it should go down or be removed once it becomes old news, I'll post the article as well. It's truly fascinating.
"When are you dead?
This is a tricky question, where science and religion often hide, or collide. It’s answered in a diversity of ways by different cultures at different times, by different physicians in different hospitals, different shamans in different tribes. Is it when your heart stops working (as in Japan and Shintoism)? When your soul leaves your body (as in Tibet and Buddhism)? When your brain stops working? When a certain part of your brain stops working? Who decides when you’re dead?
Can you be dead in body, but not in mind? Vice versa?
Cogito ergo sum?
A new study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine adds intriguing neuroscientific fuel to the fires already ablaze around these questions.
Typically, when a severely head-injured patient is checked for consciousness soon after his or her accident, the physician might look for the ability to track a moving item with the eyes or say “lift a finger if you can hear me,” and then if answered in the affirmative, maybe “lift two fingers for yes, one for no.” At some point over time, if there’s no response and apparent unconsciousness continues, the patient is considered to be in a ‘persistent vegetative state.’ Doesn’t sound too good, nobody’s happy. What to do?
Challenging enough question. But, now along comes Martin Monti and his colleagues in Belgium. They add a new test for consciousness, applied to fifty-plus folks in a proclaimed vegetative state. Monti et al., using an MRI machine (which monitors for active neurons in the brain), watch these folks’ brains when they are asked a question. And, amazingly a handful of the patients’ brains light up ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ just like your brain or mine would if we were asked a question. These folks are thinking—they are responding to a specific question. They are not vegetables after all! Or at least I don’t think so.
Think of the implications for: my life (now I can communicate with my family, my health care providers); my care (now I can respond to questions about my health care and comfort); health care in general (do we now spend the time and money to do an MRI on every person thought to be in a vegetative state?); understanding of the conscious and the unconscious (in what kind of thinking-space am I living?). As is often the case, in the scientific paper explaining this new MRI-thinking, most of these issues are either ignored or barely brushed up against (although, to the journal’s credit, the article is accompanied by an editorial that begins to explore some of these issues).
But you can get an idea of the complexity of this research’s ethical implications from the reactions of students in two very different courses I happened to be teaching in a single day. In one class—of physicians discussing research ethics—a neurologist was very upset. She thought these research findings would be just as likely to make it even more difficult for her and families to decide what to do with those in a vegetative or near-vegetative state. The families might demand the new test, and then, if there is some intentional brain activity, they might be excited or even more frustrated and upset, depending on how they interpreted the results in their own consciousnesses.
As if confirming this, in my other course—this time a class of undergraduates exploring why we believe the things we do—we happened to be exploring the question of what constitutes a person. We had just read Descartes’ famous treatise (in which he proclaims “I think, therefore I am”) and the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio’s Descartes’ Error. Based on this new MRI research, we asked the question: If your Dad can only communicate through ‘thought MRI’ like patients in this study, would you consider him alive?
A student answered: I’d rather pull the plug, let him die. From personal experience, I’d rather just pull the plug. Tears formed in the student’s eyes, she broke down, and ran from the room.
Does religion help us here? Yes and no, as we heard in the (in)famous Terry Schiavo case. There are diverse responses to such cases even within particular religions, because the factual and conceptual lines are so blurry. A Catholic or a Jew might say: in Genesis we learn that we are all made in the image of God, we all have an inherent dignity, and to take that away is wrong.
But what constitutes dignity here? another Catholic or Jew (or my student who ran from the room) might ask. A Muslim might say: to kill one person is to kill all people, to help one is to help all—but another might ask: how are we defining life?
One Buddhist says, we must hold on and wait for a miracle—but another responds: we must let this person and her soul go peacefully or else we are negatively impacting its next life.
Once again, science sneaks in on (invades?) the way we live and die—and makes it easier, and harder, to do so.
But here at least is one good thing: palliative medicine—a new official branch of care, complete with certification, association, and peer-reviewed journals—has emerged. The goal of palliative care is to help relieve people who are dying or have a chronic condition from suffering by engaging their physical, mental, and spiritual health. Palliative medicine won’t easily solve problems like those posed here, but at least we are beginning to develop a framework that will allow us to better prepare for death, to more effectively explore the complexities, and, I hope, to reach richer conclusions."
"Arri Eisen is a Senior Lecturer in Biology, Director of the Program in Science & Society and of the Science, Ethics, & Society Initiative of the Ethics Center at Emory University.
AAA"
So what do you Zoners think? Has it changed your minds on anything or made you think differently in any way? Would you want this test done on you or on a loved one if such a tragic thing were to happen?
This has only become an issue since we can keep people alive indefinitely.
But in the U.S. anyway, my betting money's on the continued objectification of health care, aka it's a commodity in this country, and not a moral obligation.
Hence, this test will be subject to one's ability to pay, at least that's where my betting money's at. And lest anyone misunderstand, I don't believe doctors would be getting rich off it. In fact probably no person or entity will.
Just goes to show, though, there are finer lines than we all know of, perhaps.
It beats going unconscious and being buried alive though. Edgar Alan Poe, anyone?
Yeah, america still hasn't caught onto socialised healthcare. Maybe someday. But this is certainly a very interesting article, particularly for those, like myself, who believe in euthanasia in extreme cases like this. But if it really does work as they say, then it takes the burden off the family, the state etc. since the patient can decide what he/she wants. The trick is to make sure that he/she really understands what's being asked.
If someone was in extreme pain and the doctors said that they had a month to live.
what would you do.
if this person was you wouldn't you want to be put out of you misery?
however it is illegal to do this.
what are yalls views on a situation like this?
I'd do it regardless. The person's wishes are far more important than anything else. And yes, if it were me, I would hope someone would take me out of my misery. If a person can't be owned by law, and if a person is supposed to belong to him/herself, then the government has no business interfeering with one's wishes to die, so long as they don't harm anyone else who wished to stay alive.
If your thought processes no longer function, you are dead, I think. What if, somehow, someone was born without a consciousness, or a terrible accident left them with none of their higher functions? What would you do? Leave them on life support for thirty years so someone can look at them occasionally and feel sorry?
And what if someone is completely, irreversibly paralyzed, yet their mind is still active (and you can tell this, by showing/asking them things and using machines to scan where their brains light up in response). What would you do?
The first case begs for euthanasia, precisely for the reasons that you stated. As for the second, since the person could understand and since his/her responses could be read by others, he/she should be the one to make the decision. It would be unfair for anyone else to do it in that case.
The simple solution to this question is: write a living will. It will save time, money, and heartache.
Personally, I wouldn't want the plug pulled on myself, unless I decided it. If I could have that test done on family members, in a case like an accident for example, I would. Let them decide. I believe that girl's reaction, as depicted in the article had more to do with what she would want for herself, rather than what she would want for her father.
If you discover that their brains have no conscious reactions to the questions, and they have no living will....You're stuck--or whoever makes medical decisions in the event that he/she is indisposed to do so.
But if there's no brain function, there's no real life going on anyway. The person is just existing, not living, and most likely only existing due to technology.
What does this have to do with the subject at hand?
I see another board spammer in the making. *sigh*
I do wonder if someone with no higher functions could live without technology, as long as they were given food and shelter. scary thought, that.
I see another one in the making too...this same person posted the same thing on another topic. geez.
I feel it's important to discuss these things with relatives before something happens to incapacitate them to a point where they can't make a decision for themselves. People may find this subject very depressing, but it's good to have it in writing. I think the appropriate name for this is document is a living will.
Yes, and it's sad, but it's also a possibility in life. I think it's important to be realistic and to have all your bases covered as the phrase goes.
Yeah, if I don't have a consciousness anymore and won't get it back, just off me, by God lol well not lol but you know...
When am I dead? Not now and that's all that matters. I won't bother reading this topic in its entirety because If I do I probably will want to be dead.
Oh my God Wayne, you're such a fucking uncaring moron.....You wouldn't care about anyone, ever. It's all you you you you in your book and no one else matters because you are unbelievably self-centered. Karma, bite him in the butt please, and say I didn't give you the suggestion...
Perhaps I'm too busy caring about other people to wonder when I am dead? You can waste your life thinking about being dead, but you won't be able to waste your death by wishing you were still alive.
I don't waste my time thinking of death. I use my time thinking and doing all sorts of things and considering many possibilities of things in both life and death. For me, death isn't an end. It's a question mark, an unknown, with a strong possibility of something unexpected beyond it. Life is now and time does not always prey on my mind as it does on many others'.