I’m not saying it would change much but I do kind of wish reporters with access would repeatedly, like every day, ask Republicans in Congress why they have decided that blatant corruption of the sort that has been consensus illegal for centuries is now basically entirely legal for this one guy.
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Cinemablend is movie, entertainment, and celebrity news and gossip.
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Yeah, no.
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A new definition of death, a new definition of death… Hmm… Let’s see…
How about “yearly income below 50% of the poverty line”?
Yes, that’ll do.
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I think writing as a guest essayist for the NYT is a pretty solid sign of brain death.
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I read the article. It’s pretty clinical. The authors are all doctors and transplant surgeons. I think their motivations are good. I think they need someone on their team who is a little more grounded in dealing with the public to write their articles advocating for the change they want, because it comes across more than a little cold and analytical, and a little inhuman.
The tl;dr is that there is a procedure used widely (according to the authors) in Europe and increasing in use here that increases how many organs are usable in cases of circulatory death rather than brain death. But there are ethical concerns and potential for abuse.
This is the important bit:
Fortunately, there is a relatively new method that can improve the efficacy of donation after circulatory death. In this procedure, which is called normothermic regional perfusion, doctors take an irreversibly comatose donor off life support long enough to determine that the heart has stopped beating permanently — but then the donor is placed on a machine that circulates oxygen-rich blood through the body to preserve organ function. Donor organs obtained through this procedure, which is used widely in Europe and increasingly in the United States, tend to be much healthier.
But by artificially circulating blood and oxygen, the procedure can reanimate a lifeless heart. Some doctors and ethicists find the procedure objectionable because, in reversing the stoppage of the heart, it seems to nullify the reason the donor was declared dead in the first place. Is the donor no longer dead, they wonder?
Proponents of the procedure reply that the resumption of the heartbeat should not be considered resuscitation; the donor still has no independent functioning, nor is there any hope of it. They say that it is not the donor but rather regions of the body that have been revived.
So what they’re proposing is to broaden the definition of death to include comatose patients who are not brain dead, but whose hearts would stop irreversibly if taken off life support. I find this . . . horrific. The procedure they describe sounds great, but broadening the definition of death the way they are proposing could include people who might not be revivable today, but could be revivable in a year if some medical advancement is made. And I don’t mean some unimaginable, sci-fi level advancement.
These doctors sound pretty heartless, ironically. They really need to hire someone with more compassion and empathy.
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I don’t know… These guys watch patients die every day waiting for an organ, while donor organs waste away in living corpses. I don’t have an answer, and (thank God) this is not my field. But i do have empathy for medical personnel watching patients die who could be saved. And i don’t believe there is a perfect definition of death, nor one that cannot be abused. Like anything else, it’s not binary.
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I get all that. My main point is that this op-ed was published in the New York Times, obviously intended for a general audience, and it reads like its intended audience is physicians like you. They need to hire someone who can write with more empathy if they’re going to advocate for this change to the general public. The way they present it, this change sounds overbroad to me. It feels like it could include more people who maybe aren’t really dead yet.
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Unfortunately, you are correct. This is the kind of stuff that leads people to be afraid to be organ donors for fear of being “harvested alive,” as I have seen it put. Unfortunately again, surgeons are not known for their self-awareness and concern for how they are perceived. Like I said, not sure there is a perfect answer to what is really a metaphysical question. But this assessment was poorly phrased.
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What was the joke, from 10 or 15 years ago? (Might have even been ToP]
“There are no more phone booths! Where would Clark Kent change into Superman?!”
“I don’t know, where would Clark Kent work?”
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Way back in the day, that book freaked me the hell out!
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Which is why it is important for everyone to have this conversation with every loved one in their life, even younger adults, just in case. And have a medical power of attorney in their medical files. If you’re following someone’s wishes, it’s much easier to make the decision and know it’s right.
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My dude, I had nightmares for months after seeing that on TV.
My grandparents had no self-awareness around what wasn’t kid-safe TV. Also saw Killer Bees and Duel while staying with them. WTAF. Several years of many months of nightmares after being shipped off to their house for couple weeks in the summer. 
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No.
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