To plays devil’s advocate there are inconsistent standards of what constitutes dead many established decades ago and whereas some folks are obviously by any standard a potato others including by standards they themselves elect are defunct in ways that we understand far less eg not able to initiate breathing on their own or not capable of regaining consciousnesses. Due to our lack of complete understanding there have been cases in which people were taken off the ventilator to die and spontaneously started breathing. EG our original analysis was obviously incomplete.
What is experienced if anything by those near or even post official death is also an interesting open question. Experiments involving flooding pig heads dead for > 1 hour with oxygenated liquid have shown some sign of electrical activity in cells for instance. We don’t even know what the subjective experience of people being operated on really is other than obviously NORMALLY they don’t consciously form memories or have control of their faculties.
All of that said organ transplants save so many lives and it is a voluntary process. If you have any concerns whatsoever you ought to think hard about it and make your wishes expressly known rather than blanket shutting the door on saving those lives. I am an organ donor. I have faith in my family to make intelligent decisions if I’m not able to make them.
I’ve worked in ERs before and am somewhat familiar with the process they use for determining brain death. There was a child that came in with catastrophic brain damage, and the process to determine that the child was in a permanent vegetative state was quite extensive. There were multiple evaluation by neurologists and neurosurgeons via MRI and EEG over the course of multiple days to verify a lack of brain function. It’s not something that is determined in the moment. The decision made in the ER is whether or not the organs will be donated because it can make some differences in the life-support care during the brain death determination process.
NORMALLY they don’t consciously form memories or have control of their faculties
And remember, those two states (not being able to form memories AND not having control of faculties) can be, and sometimes are, two different drugs. It’s why you have the horror stories of people remembering waking up on the surgery table, but being unable to move.
To plays devil’s advocate there are inconsistent standards of what constitutes dead many established decades ago and whereas some folks are obviously by any standard a potato others including by standards they themselves elect are defunct in ways that we understand far less eg not able to initiate breathing on their own or not capable of regaining consciousnesses. Due to our lack of complete understanding there have been cases in which people were taken off the ventilator to die and spontaneously started breathing. EG our original analysis was obviously incomplete.
What is experienced if anything by those near or even post official death is also an interesting open question. Experiments involving flooding pig heads dead for > 1 hour with oxygenated liquid have shown some sign of electrical activity in cells for instance. We don’t even know what the subjective experience of people being operated on really is other than obviously NORMALLY they don’t consciously form memories or have control of their faculties.
All of that said organ transplants save so many lives and it is a voluntary process. If you have any concerns whatsoever you ought to think hard about it and make your wishes expressly known rather than blanket shutting the door on saving those lives. I am an organ donor. I have faith in my family to make intelligent decisions if I’m not able to make them.
I’ve worked in ERs before and am somewhat familiar with the process they use for determining brain death. There was a child that came in with catastrophic brain damage, and the process to determine that the child was in a permanent vegetative state was quite extensive. There were multiple evaluation by neurologists and neurosurgeons via MRI and EEG over the course of multiple days to verify a lack of brain function. It’s not something that is determined in the moment. The decision made in the ER is whether or not the organs will be donated because it can make some differences in the life-support care during the brain death determination process.
And remember, those two states (not being able to form memories AND not having control of faculties) can be, and sometimes are, two different drugs. It’s why you have the horror stories of people remembering waking up on the surgery table, but being unable to move.