Definitions of Death and What We Mean by Person  

Oleh:

Schumacher, Bernard N.

Jenis: Article from Books - E-Book
Dalam koleksi: Death and Mortality in Contemporary Philosophy, page 13-48.
Topik: Biological Death; Personal Death; The Anthropological Challenge of Neocortical Death; Ethics as The Criterion for Defining Death; Diversity of Definitions of Death in a Secular Ethic
Fulltext: Definitions of Death and What We Mean by Person.pdf (472.21KB)

Isi artikel

The recent technological discoveries that make it possible to transplant human organs and to keep a human being alive artii cially with the help of machines, as well as the controversy surrounding euthanasia, have given rise to a heated debate revolving around the question of knowing when a human subject is really dead. This inquiry is nothing new. What is new are the motives driving people to look for particular criteria and signs of death that are truly reliable. Whereas people in times past were moved by the fear of being buried alive, 1 our contemporaries are afraid that their organs might be taken from them while they are still alive – that they might undergo a “vivisection”, 2 to use Jonas’s expression – or that they might be killed unawares by euthanasia. In order to be sure that one is not killing a human being while removing his organs, it is crucial to dei ne the nature of human death and then to develop tests for certifying the demise. If a patient is in a so-called permanent vegetative state and is being kept alive artii cially by means of mechanical support, is that human being dead? Can the same be said of Terri Schiavo, who continued to live only because of artii cial feeding and hydration? Should we assume that she had passed away the moment when she was “irreversibly” plunged into that state? An anencephalic newborn has no cortex, and a human being suffering from “locked-in syndrome”, for example, Bauby as described in his book The Diving Bell and the Butterl y , is conscious but imprisoned, so to speak, in what is said to be a so-called permanent vegetative state: can they or should they be considered dead?

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