Author: Derek Beres / Source: Big Think
- The latest Hastings Center Report is dedicated to the question of defining death.
- Definitions of death are not only biological, but cultural, leading to important questions about organ donation.
- The brain can continue to be electrically active for five minutes after cardiac death—valuable time for patients in need of transplants.
One of the most disturbing movies I’ve ever watched is The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Based on French fashion editor Jean-Dominuqe Bauby’s book of the same name, it chronicles his life after waking up with locked-in syndrome having suffering from a massive stroke. While Bauby’s mental faculties were entirely intact, he was paralyzed save the blinking of his left eyelid, which is the method he used to “write” his book.
Empathy is the vehicle of upset, why I shuddered during the entire film. Imagine yourself unable to move anything but an eyelid and remain completely aware of your condition. Bauby suffered from pseudocoma; there is also total locked-in syndrome, meaning you no longer have use of your eye muscles either. Still, you remain conscious.
Such a condition begs the question: Is this even living? It also brings to mind another question, one that is surprisingly more malleable than you might imagine: What does death mean? Turns out there are a variety of responses.
The latest issue of the Hastings Center Report (which you can access for free here), Defining Death: Organ Transplantation and the Fifty-Year Legacy of the Harvard Report on Brain Death, looks at the ways in which various cultures view death. There is no one singular answer.
Jason Silva – The Death Problem
In ‘Death: An Evolving, Normative Concept‘, NYU Bioethics professor Arthur Caplan relates the story of Constantin Reliu, a Romanian who traveled to Turkey to make a living as a cook. At some point he lost contact with his family; his former wife reported him deceased to…
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