Brain Death Research Paper

What is brain death? Physicians and other health care professional have often accepted that a person is deceased when his or her brain is dead. Although the widespread use of mechanical ventilators and other advanced critical care services have transformed the course of terminal neurologic disorders. Through the advancements in medicine and technology, vital signs

Karen Ann Quinlan was out with her friends on April 14, 1975. Near the end of the night at the party, she consumed large amounts of alcohol and the sedative Valium. This caused her to go into a coma. Karen stayed in the coma for 1 year, until her doctor told her family she was in a ‘vegetative state’, meaning she was brain dead. Her parents had wanted to end her suffering, so they asked for Karen to be taken off life support. The doctors refused them so the Quinlan family took the case to court. At first, the judge had refused to let this happen as the doctors opposed disconnecting the respirator. Stating that it violated the state’s homicide laws. A week later, the Quinlans took this case to the New Jersey Supreme Court, of whom ruled that it was unusual punishment. But ultimately, the Supreme Court, based upon the right to privacy, ruled that Karen was permitted to be taken off. But when she was taken off, she continued breathing. This could be from the cerebellum, which is the primitive brain and it controls involuntary functions such

viii. Brain Death must be established- person must cease having neurons firing in the neuro system

In "What is Death? The Crisis of Criteria" Louis Pojman introduced four definitions of death and describes their benefits and limitations. The four definitions include loss of the soul, cardiopulmonary failure, whole brain death and neocortical brain death, of which the cardiopulmonary is typically most common. I intend to show, using the work of Jonathan Glover and reasoning, that the neocortical brain death definition holds significant merit and is truly more practical and ethical.

In the CRUZAN v. DIRECTOR, MISSOURI DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH 497 U.S. 261 (1990) case that was presented to the Supreme Court in 1990 was about a woman named Nancy Beth Cruzan and her right to die. The According to thesciencewritinblog.com, “On January 11, 1983 Nancy Beth Cruzan’s car overturned when she was driving home from her job at a cheese factory. She was found face down in a ditch, and although paramedics restarted her heart, 15 minutes without oxygen left her with severe brain damage (Science and Law).” Cruzan stayed in a diligent vegetative state in which she showed no intellectual capacity, yet had reflexes after waking up from her 3 week coma. Cruzan parents wanted take off life support but the hospital refused to do so without a court order because there was no living will so there was no evidence to support that Nancy would have wanted that for herself.

This concept is like that of the system that ranks the moral value of fetuses to see if abortion is justified but sort of in reverse. As more and more time goes on without any cognitive improvement, the legal system tends to view this as the patient losing moral value until eventually there is a point where the court steps in deciding that it is ethically acceptable to end a patient’s life. This action suggests that just like the fetus reaches full moral value at birth, there is an unclear time period that when patients pass deems them as not being a person anymore because there is just no chance of them possibly making any sort of recovery. This was the situation in the Terri Schiavo case, as many neurologists strongly believed that Terri had passed the point of being able to make a recovery and when the court system ultimately intervened to end her physical life, they made it clear that her unresponsiveness to stimuli over the years suggested that she was no longer a person (Pence

The case went all the way to New Jersey Supreme Court before it was finally resolved. The state of New Jersey argued that the request to remove the ventilator should be denied because of the state preservation of life policy. The plaintiff argue for that this infringed upon the right to privacy individuals have because people have the right to refuse medical help, only if they are mentally competent however. The Supreme Court of New Jersey agreed that because the right to privacy was a penumbra right, a right that is implied by the United States Constitution, if Karen Quinlan was to gain competency, with the assumption that she would then fall back in the persistent vegetative state, she should have the right to decide whether or not to remove the life supporting ventilator. The main reason of concern was the she was in a state that did not allow her to give an answer, and she did not have a living will, a legal document that tells what the person wants to happen to them should they be incapacitated, but that her father was the person deciding if the tube should be

One day in January 1980 in Chicago Illinois, a women name Nancy Grace was driving excessively fast and lost control, the accident was relentless deadly accident. When the paramedics arrived, they were able to restore her breathing and heartbeat; she was then transported to the hospital, unconscious, 26 year old Nancy continued to be fed through a surgically implanted tube. After several years, “a court found that although her respiration and circulation continued unaided, she was unconscious to her surroundings except for reflexive responses to sound and perhaps painful stimuli, her brain had been degenerated and severely injured, irreversibly”(1996-2000 Chris Docker) she was a spastic quadriplegic; she suffered contraction of her four extremities, with irreversible muscle and tendon damage; she had no cognitive or reflex ability to swallow food or water or to maintain her essential daily needs nor would she ever recover such an ability. She lay in vegetative state even though she had told her housemate that, if sick, injured or extremely ill, she would not wish to continue her life and be a bother to anyone unless she could live “at least halfway normal”. This was the first time the United States Supreme Court had been faced with what we call the "right to die”( 2000 Chris Docker) or known yet as “Euthanasia”. They said that Missouri had "arrogated to itself" the power to define life, and Nancy’s life and liberty consequently was put into disturbing conflict. She had not

According to the Holy Text in Islam, killing a person, even when said person is terminally ill, is forbidden. Yet modern advancements in medicine are continuously increasing the conditions that question this ahkam or perhaps render it anachronistic. Contemporary improvements in medicine have, for the first time ever, granted humans the ability to maintain physical life even when cerebral existence has ceased. Furthermore, new technologies have allowed doctors to employ extreme measures in prolonging life even in the direst of circumstances. Such cutting-edge developments, which are continuing to create new ways to keep people alive, also generate alternative decisions that were previously unavailable to doctors and patients in earlier times. One of the most controversial options that is now accessible to the medical community is that of life support. Its controversy derives from the many questions it prompts surrounding euthanasia, murder, and suicide. These questions are particularly important to Muslims because the Holy Scripture provides some clashing regulations according to the Shari’a. In my paper, I will analyze the central doctrine and rules of Islam that guide the practices of end-of-life resolutions. I will also review the ethical obstacles that Muslim jurists and medical practitioners face when proposing and carrying out actions regarding brain death and life support with adherence to the Shari’a. I find that two courses of action, which allow the

A biotech company in the United States was granted ethical permission to sign up 20 brain dead patients to test whether parts to their central nervous system can be brought back to life. They plan to regenerate the brains of people who are considered brain dead using a combination of stem cells and laser simulation. For example, at the Anupam Hospital in Rudrapur they have participants who have been certified to be dead and kept alive through life support. They are monitored using brain imaging equipment to check for signs of regeneration, specifically in the upper spinal cord, which is the lower region of the brain stem that controls breathing and heartbeat. Athough there are patients who still have complete bodily functions like blood circulation,

Death is the greatest challenge to humanity. There are different meanings we attach to death, which determine how we live and create our personal choices.“It is the single universal event that affects all of us in ways more than we care to know (Tomer, Wong,2011).” “Functional Death is defined by an absence of heartbeat and breathing (Feldman,2011)”. However, in the U.S.,the legal definition of death is the “absence of brain functioning” (Feldman,2011). Brain death is when all brain activity has ceased and there’s no way to restore the brain functions. Death can happen in the different points of the lifespan as well; however the elderly are less anxious about dying than in earlier stages. Kubler-Ross also created certain steps toward the

Throughout history, there has been controversy surrounding the definition of death. Theories present different ideas and the definition has changed significantly from the physical criteria of the 1960’s (Leming 2011). The definition of death also varies from country to country. According to the centralist theory, a single organ contains all of the vital life source and if it fails, a person is dead (Leming 2011). The decentralist theory maintains that the entire body, including each cell and organ, possess the life force (Leming 2011). The United Nations and the World Health Organization defined death in the 1950s as “…the permanent disappearance of all evidence of life at any time after birth has taken place” (Leming 2011:45). This

Management of latter is complex because of medical, social, ethical and legal factors. For example, Jahi McMath, who was diagnosed as brain dead by three doctors, should be disconnected from life support. However she was kept on a ventilator due to her parent’s request. Because the ventilator keeps blood and oxygen in the body moving, her parents believe in her recovery. However without the brain, the body does not secrete hormones that are important to biological regulation and the body has to be artificially kept ‘alive.’ So basically if you are brain dead, you are dead, but with technology it is possible to make the body do the same things it does when it is alive. But why support the body when the individual has lost all form of self? Jahi’s family believes that they should. They don’t want her off life support because they are in denial of her daughters condition and are having a harder and harder time of letting her go the more they fight for her to stay on the machines. Nonetheless, the hospital has the right to legally stop life support of an individual who is declared legally dead, without the consent of the family. It is not only legal of the hospital but also ethical. Letting Jahi off life support will give closure to her family and stop the fruitless effort of supporting her dead body. As cruel as it all sounds, letting the body continue to ‘live’ off of machines will only root it and their daughter will remain

In 2002, Harvard University developed a criterion to determine if a human being should be classified as dead. This includes a lack of receptivity and response to external stimuli, absence of spontaneous muscular movement and spontaneous breathing, absence of observable reflexes, and an absence of brain activity. For those of us who have experienced the death of a loved one, it can be tough to grasp the ultimatum of death and its finality. In the case of Jahi McMath, a tonsillectomy gone wrong resulted in cardiac arrest and ultimately brain death for the 13 year-old girl. In this essay we will discuss her condition and her family’s determination to keep her on life support, clinging onto the hope that she is, in fact, alive.

The moment we 're born, we have already began the spiral into death. As technology advances, medical advances follow suite. These advances carry with them prolonged life, lengthening our lives. But as our lives lengthen we find ourselves confronted with the undeniable truth that in the cat and mouse game of life and death, death always wins. As, we arrive at the tail end of the bell curve of life, we find ourselves overcome with pain and suffering. In an attempt to alleviate suffering, alternatives are sought. The first chapter examines the background of the end of life options available in California for a person with brain cancer with less than six months to live. Next, I will continue, by presenting the underlying questions which will be used to answer.