"Brain Dead" has become a rather loaded term

[cthulu2016]

I was reading th article about how Jahi McMath's body is deteriorating...

Jahi McMath: Family says brain-dead teen's body may be too deteriorated to save
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=690589

Notice that the word "brain" is all that keeps it from being an Onion article. We are talking about the deterioration of a corpse... a deterioration being slowed by machines, but still advancing.

The term "brain dead" has legal and medical significance, but also significance in how it points up how we still hold to a traditional notion of REAL death as something different.

Brain dead is not a weird, legalistic category of semi-death. It IS death. Death IS brain death.

A stopped heart is not considered death anymore. A stopped heart is a crisis to be fixed. We have electrical devices in shopping malls placed there so that in an emergency a lay person can restart someone's heart that happens to stop.

The reason we restart stopped hearts is that if they stay stopped for too long the person will die the TRUE irreversible death of certain brain cells that are needed to be alive.

"Brain dead" is not a special odd-ball category of death that lawyers made up to cause trouble.

It is DEATH.

It is not being in a coma. It looks like being in a coma, but it isn't.

It is how we define death.

Which raises a journalistic question... is there a reason to say "brain dead" instead of "dead"?

[TwilightGardener]

1. You're dead when your heart stops beating for good. You are dying when your

brain stem no longer works--you are doomed. But the organ donation industry has a big stake in educating people that brain death is death, because otherwise no organs would be transferred in time--families would cling to false hope for too long. I think it's disrespectful to call people "corpses" when they're not dead, frankly.

[Journeyman]

2. One reason would be if doctors were waiting to harvest the organs. . .

"Brain dead" would then signify what limited time remained for them to act. "Dead" would indicate an immediate need to act.

[FSogol]

3. There are many terms that are used out of respect for others opinions/sensibilities

Last edited Tue Jan 7, 2014, 03:05 PM - Edit history (1)

brain dead
theory of evolution
dearly departed


I'll probably think of some more after I hit post....

Should the paper shout she's dead, she's dead over and over?