#86: Autor: padobranac,
Postano: 18.03.2012. 23:36
Znam da je predug tekst, no evo recimo jednog misljenja s jednog foruma..ovo je inace svud u svijetu predmetom raprave:
What bothers me about most discussions of brain death is that the arguments many people use are based upon what they "feel" is right, upon what medical science can observe about the brain, or upon appeals to "quality of life" or to the necessity of using those organs to help others who need them. These arguments all beg the question: what is death? This can only be answered by a right philosophy, not by science. Science can only portray the physical evidence; it is doctors and ethicists who have made the determination of death based upon that evidence. The medical evidence says nothing except that there is no apparent functioning in the brain; this upon its own does not say whether or not it is death of the person. This is a definition based upon a person's judgement of these facts. Medical ethicists, who admittedly have a vested interest in this, due to the possibility of harvesting organs, have taken over the job of defining death and life. This is not something that should be taken lightly.
To those who argue based upon the fact that they "feel" it is right: one's subjective feelings about something, even though his/her conviction may be very strong, is never a valid basis for truth, unless it is backed up by something objectively right. If there is any question at all, one's feelings may not suffice to provide direction. Especially in matters of life and death, this should NOT be any kind of green light to go ahead.
To those who argue that the benefits of organ harvesting are enough to justify brain death as death of the person: One may not use a relativistic argument that assumes that one person's life is more important than another. Just because you know that a person, because of his medical condition, has little or no chance of living a normal life, and may even die soon, does not make that person's life any less valuable. That person deserves to be nurtured and cared for, until the very end, and the end may not be hastened by well-meaning attempts to help others. Otherwise, human beings play God and decide that this or that person is expendable, because of X,Y, & Z. Where does that end? That's the thinking of Hitler - he disposed of people that he had no use for. Life (ALL life) is precious and sacred, and it must be cherished and respected at every stage, from conception until natural death; otherwise, NO human's life is sacred. The same arguments that are used to justify this situation, as well as many more such current issues in medical ethics, can be used either for or against anyone, according to whoever is making the rules.
What strikes me is that many people, in saying that brain death is "real" death, often contradict themselves by stating that it is cruel to keep someone here on earth indefinitely. The person is either here or not; if dead, the life support machines are not prolonging anything. One thing I hear often when people say brain death is real death, is that the person's soul is no longer there, just the body. While I agree that humans have a spiritual soul, the body and soul are not separate. We are "embodied souls"; the body and soul are intrinsically united. How can the body continue to breathe, the heart beat, and blood flow to the organs, keeping them healthy, if the person is not alive? Machines cannot do all this work: they can pump air into the person and can stimulate the heart to beat, but they cannot cause the exchange of oxygen to happen at the tissue level. Eventually, when the person does die, no machine in the world can keep this process going. Does this not tell us that there is something more to death than mere "brain death"?
I realize that there are still many more questions, and that this does not sufficiently cover all the grounds. But, my point was to at least emphasize that it is CRITICAL what methods we use to justify such an argument. Our culture is so used to using faulty logic to arrive at the conclusions that we do. Only a solid foundation in morality and good philosophical reasoning, based upon objective truth, will suffice to even discuss this question. This question should be considered in the light of these solid foundations, separate from the pressures of organ donation. The pressure of organ donation should not be a factor in determining whether or not brain death is true death; this question has to be fully answered before any questions about organ donation can be answered.
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