Dick Teresi on when and how the medical community decides someone is dead, and the possibility cadavers can feel pain. (From the archive)
Dick Teresi is the former editor of Science Digest and author of The Undead, an unsettling inquiry into the demands of organ transplanting, and when and how the medical community decides someone is dead.
Q: Some of what you report is disturbing, especially the way doctors rushed to embrace the concept of brain death, even ignoring the brain-wave evidence of EEGs when they proved inconvenient. Why was that? A: I was at Good Housekeeping back in the ’70s and, as an editor, ran an article on: here’s how you can donate your organs! It seemed like a wonderful thing. Space-age, magic almost. But now I find the denial among doctors overwhelming. When I read the original Harvard report from 1968, I was just amazed at how there was nothing there: no patients looked at, no data cited. These guys were just winging it, just making it up about when your brain died. It didn’t stand up to subsequent studies.
A: Not so fast. One study showed that 35 per cent of the doctors and nurses who worked directly with donors in the hospital believed they were alive, but didn’t care, they thought the organs were more important. And they also believe and frequently state—you’ll see it in every pamphlet from an organ bank—that when you’re brain-dead you’re never coming back. Well, of course you’re not coming back, although in the past some have.
Q: You seem to have provoked a lot of anger among transplant people with your questions, but especially when you asked about the possibility of pain during organ removal. I don’t know what to call this, post-mortem pain?
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