Defining Death :: Biology Essays Research Papers

Defining DeathYou set out been told that someone is deceitfulness on a bed, their mind, for all intents and purposes is no longer track downing. Their internal variety meat, however, argon. You ar asked if it would be okay to remove the organs for transplantation. What do you do? As much as this question sounds like science fiction, there are 10,000 people living on life support in the fall in States.There has been a long held rule of thumb that when the heart scold and breathing have stopped, a person was considered dead. One doctor wrote of having to pass judgment death on a man when he was still an intern. He relied on a EKG, and electrocardiogram, something that measures the heart rate, to give him his final conclusion of death. To rehearse only that criteria is becoming a grayer and grayer area as medical technology progresses and other issues begin to take the fore. We are now capable of sustaining bodies for extensive periods of time and also are now able to trans plant organs from one person to another. For obvious reasons you burnnot transplant certain organs from human race beings without the donor first being dead, and then you have a real limited time within which you must harvest the organs. Just because smash of the nervous system is functioning does not necessarily mean the alight of the nervous system is. Many people from different walks of life musical note that as soon as higher functions cease and someone is sensation dead, then their organs are fair game if they had previously persistent to donate them. (2) That sentiment, while understandable, begs another question, how do you tell when these functions cease? cor answer to a commission done in 1981, brain death can be determined by the following criteria unresponsiveness (person does not respond to any external stimulus and cannot communicate with the outside world,) an absence of noetic and brain stem function (pupils are unchanging, no gag reflex, limbs are flaccid,), nature of coma is known, must rule out hypothermia, drug boozing and the person is not in shock. Also, you must have 12 hours without an encephalogram response or other EEG measure. There are also confirmatory things to look at, but these are not required, you can have an EEG with no activity, no cerebral blood flow, and no function in vital brain stem areas. (4) This can be summarized by saying that the brain has to totally cease functioning.