"david" <gringo98@aol.com> wrote in message
news:279983a8.0405131036.6aa7a77@posting.google.com...

Christopher A. Lee <calee@optonline.net> wrote in message

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Exactly. Where's its brain? Its consciousness? All the things that go
to make it human?

How does a brain make one human?

A human being.

Do you have any evidence from
science that says that you can't be human unless you have a brain.

A human being? Yes. From REFLECTIONS ON THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM
ON BRAIN DEATH:

'In his address "Dead or Alive" Earl Walker presented much of the basic
material derived from the Collaborative Study of Cerebral Survival sponsored
by the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Diseases and
Stroke (1). For ages, people had considered life to exist as long as an
individual was breathing. It was later realized that respiration was a means
of maintaining the heart which circulated the blood. Life was then
attributed to cardio-respiratory action. As long as such activity maintained
the nutritional needs of the brain, the individual was alive. But, in the
middle of this century, physicians became aware that the brain required much
more energy than other organs and, if its needs were not met, it would cease
to function, while other parts of the body (requiring less energy) might
remain viable and even regain their activity provided the circulation was
maintained. The result would be a dead brain in a viable body. Is such a
preparation alive or dead? Before answering that question, one had to
establish the general principles upon which the diagnosis of a dead brain
could be made. The cause of the coma had to be known, so that it could be
remedied, if possible. If the condition was not remediable, the state of the
brain (underlying all sets of brain-death standards) had to be determined.
The clinical status could be ascertained by standard neurological
examination. Testing was, however, often complicated by factors such as
wounds, which could render it difficult to carry out or difficult to
interpret. Other confirmatory examinations then had to be relied upon to
establish the death of the brain. But these confirmatory tests had
limitations too, some related to the quality of the examination (such as
electroencephalography) and others quantitative aspects (such as isotopic
angiography). But with the recognition of these limitations, the available
yardsticks provide a satisfactory estimate of the state of the brain. In the
rare case in which the clinical and confirmatory test seem to be at
variance, observation of the subject for a longer period of time provided
clarification of the issue. The validity of these criteria under such
circumstances as infancy, concomitant intoxications and impaired
cardiovascular status had been questioned. Having established the clinical
states of the subject, the physician usually had no problem in certifying
death. Problem cases required a careful consideration of medical, religious
and legal factors.
'The second lecture "Brainstem death. Evolution of the Concept", proved a
detonator for future discussions. Pallis (2, 3, 4) emphasized that most
controversies concerning the criteria for diagnosing death had sprung from a
reluctance to define death. Discussions about the validity of different
criteria could not meaningfully take place in a philosophical vacuum. What
we did (or did not or did not do) in the Intensive Care Unit had to flow
from explicitly formulated philosophical premises. "There was only a kind of
human death: the irreversible loss of the capacity for consciousness,
combined with the irreversible loss of the capacity to breathe (and hence to
sustain a spontaneous beat)". All death, in this perspective, was brainstem
death. But whereas there was only one death there were clearly several ways
of dying. The commonest, by far, was circulatory arrest. But this only
proved lethal if it persisted for long enough for the brainstem to sustain
irreversible anoxic damage. Circulatory arrest of briefer duration either
had no sequelae, or cause slight, moderate or severe neurological damage,
the most pronounced form of which was PVS (persistent vegetative state). The
death of the brainstem was nearly always the infratentorial repercussion of
supratentorial events. It implied the death of the "brain as a whole". A
diagnosis of brainstem death had two fundamental implications. The first,
pragmatic, was that the heart would inevitably stop, within a relative short
period. This was an empirically validated observation, to which no exception
had as yet been recorded. The second, philosophical, was that quite
independently of the cardiac prognosis an individual with a dead brainstem
was already dead (because irreversible unconscious and irreversible
apnoeic).

'Gaetano Molinari (U. S. A.) was the third on the scene. He emphasized that:
"still prohibiting unanimity among physicians worldwide were only some
unfortunate but persisting choices of words". Terms like brain death (BD),
whole brain death, brainstem death, neocortical death served only to confuse
a basic issue, namely, that heartbeat, blood pressure, and even body
temperature had lost significance as evidence of life in modern intensive
care units. In situations in which spontaneous respirations had stopped but
heartbeat persisted, death must be pronounced "neurologically". Comparing
the "whole brain" and "brain as a whole" formulations of death, he stated
that the only situation in which the British Criteria (8) might declare
persons dead while the cerebrum retained functional capacity was the
possibility and demonstration in three cases in the American Study (1), and
subsequently by others (9), of apnoeic coma with absent cephalic reflexes
due to primary brainstem lesions (suggesting death) while
electroencephalograms might indicate some residual biological activity (10).
'The fourth speaker in this marathon was Daniel Wikler, presenting some
remarks on "The Philosophical Considerations on Death". Wikler was included
as a philosopher, on the professional staff of the President's Commission
for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral
Research (11). He asked: "Should we consider a further revision in the
definition of death, one which would define death as permanent loss of
consciousness? This change would permit physicians to pronounce dead
patients in a PVS. Today we lack the ability to diagnose this condition with
certainty, so a further change in the law would be unwise. Nevertheless, we
might wish to be prepared for the day when physicians acquire the ability to
diagnose PVS with certainty, at least for some types of patient. Should such
patients be considered dead or alive?

'A thought experiment suggested the need for a further redefinition. Suppose
that, at some future date, doctors became capable of maintaining function in
severed heads and decapitated bodies. One poor man, careless in his use of
an electric saw, suffers a complete decapitation. His head is carried in an
ambulance to the Head Hospital; his body is carried to the Body Hospital in
the next town. Since no one can be in two places at once, we must ask: Where
is the patient? Is he in the Body Hospital or the Head Hospital? All of us
would answer, if we had to make a choice, that he was in the Head Hospital.
Now, to continue the story, suppose that the head dies, but that the
patient's body continues to live. Is he alive or dead? We cannot say he is
alive, since that would imply that at the time his head died he magically
switched his location to the Body Hospital. Therefore we must say: he died.
At this point in the story, we have his living body, in the Body Hospital,
but the patient is not alive. But this is what we have with a patient in
PVS; and therefore we ought to say that such a patient is not alive either.
In the future, however, we will have to address the problem of those
patients who remain in an unconscious state for many years. As an issue in
bioethics, the definition of death has been put to rest, but it has not yet
expired. In this remarkable lecture Daniel wikler introduced the Symposium
to the concept of "higher brain formulations of death" (5, 6, 7).

'Dr. Stuart Youngner (Associate Professor of Medicine, Psychiatry and
Biomedical Ethics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
and Director of the Clinical Ethics Program of the University Hospitals of
Cleveland) presented a paper on "Brain Death and Organ Transplantation:
Confusion and Its Consequences" (20). He argued that despite the rapid and
widespread embrace of so-called "brain death" in the United States,
confusion about its meaning and implications remained a problem. He gave
several examples of evidence of this confusion. First, the criterion of
brain death, i.e the irreversible loss of all brain function, was accepted
for practical reasons (without a wide agreement on exactly why patients who
had lost all brain function were dead). The practical reasons were: (1) in
the hands of a competent neurologist, neurosurgeon, or critical care
physician, brain death was a relatively easy diagnosis to make; and (2) that
once the diagnosis of brain death had been made the prognosis was certain
that the patient would never regain consciousness and would develop asystole
within a short time, despite continued aggressive intervention. The
diagnostic certainty and uniformly dismal cardiac prognosis for brain-dead
patients facilitated the acceptance of policies aimed at treatment
withdrawal and organ retrieval.

'A study by Youngner and his colleagues (20) at Case Western Reserve
University had, however, indicated that physicians and nurses working in
critical care and operating room settings accepted brain death for different
reasons. Some thought brain-dead patients were dead because they would never
wake up again. Others accepted them as dead because they had lost the
integrating functions of the brainstem. Still others indicated that they did
not really believe the patients were dead, saying that the patients were
"going to die very soon despite aggressive treatment" or that their "quality
of life was unacceptable."

'Further evidence of confusion was the stubborn persistence of the term
"brain death" itself. Health professionals consistently referred to patients
who had lost all brain function as brain-dead (rather than, simply dead). It
is also common to hear them say that the brain-dead patient "died" after
life support had been removed. Of course you can not die if you are already
dead. The persistence of term brain death may well reflect an inevitable
conflict between reason (which told us that brain-dead patients were dead)
and emotions. The latter were stimulated by the many signs of "life" still
shown in brain-dead patients. These were of particular concern to nurses who
took care of brain-dead patients. Intensive Care Unit nurses reported
feelings of discomfort at calling patients "dead" who require aggressive
treatment (including resuscitative efforts if the "dead" patient develop a
cardiac arrests) at a time when clearly living and conscious patients, in
the same unit, fell into the "do not resuscitate" category. In the operating
theater, nurses sometimes felt that the patient's spirit was in the room
during organ retrieval surgery, and only departed when the ventilator was
turned off and the patient came to complete rest. These examples of
confusion were inevitable when we were willing to call patients dead when so
much life persisted. This confusion pointed not only to the need for more
ongoing education about brain death, but also for wide debate and consensus
among various elements of society (including not only doctors, but the legal
and religious communities, and especially the lay public) before policies
are implemented and enforced. To do otherwise was to foment distrust and
suspicion of medical science, perhaps undermining the worthwhile goal of
saving more lives by getting more persons to donate their organs.'

BTW, Pope John Paul II supports organ transplantation and brain death. In a
speech on organ transplantation, he said that "the Church does not make
technical decisions" on how to measure something like death. In other
words, whatever science comes up with is fine with the Vatican, as long as
it identifies "the biological signs that a person has indeed died." The
Pope notes that the *fact* of death is simply "the separation of the
life-principle (or soul) from the corporal reality of the person", something
no scientific method can identify. But this "total disintegration of the
unitary and integrated whole that is the personal self" is inevitably
followed by "certain biological signs which medicine has learnt to recognise
with increasing precision."

So, do you disagree with the Pope that there is a difference between the
"personal self", which is what we are, and "human life", which can persist
after "the separation of the life-principle (or soul) from the corporal
reality of the person"?

Reference for the conference on brain death:
http://www.changesurfer.com/BD/1992.html

Note: the writer, Dr. Calixto Machado, a neurologist and neurosurgeon, is
not a native speaker of English

Ever heard of a condition called anencephaly (spelling maybe slightly
off) - this is a condition where children are born (and often
miscarried) without large portions of their brain or no brain at all.
They usually die within hours after birth. Are these children not
human?

If you read the whole report on the brain-death conference, you'll see that
there are multiple arguments about what we should accept as "death".
National laws and practices as well as religions and individuals disagree.
Currently in the US, anencephalic infants are considered "alive" because
they have a temporarily functioning brainstem. Many parents of such babies
would like to donate their infant's organs as a means of mitigating their
own grief by salvaging something out of their tragedy and are trying to
change the law to recognize anencephalic babies as "dead". Contrariwise,
there is a different movement called C.U.R.E. (Committee United to Resist
Euthanasia) which rejects the Pope's point of view and insists that only
somatic, that is to say whole-body death (e.g. decay) should be accepted and
that organ transplantation should be disallowed even for adults.
Interestingly, they use many of the same arguments and language as
anti-abortion folks do. Google my posts for "pope" and "shewmon" to see
what I mean.

By the way, by 30 days after conception the 3 primary parts of the
brain are present

So? That doesn't mean that "the personal self" is present.

(according to From Conception to Birth
Roberts Rugh, Ph.D., Landrum B. Shettles, Ph.D., M.D. Harper & Row,
(New York), 1971 p. 41).

Have you read this book? If not, do not quote it as if you had.

The large majority of abortions occur after
this time period.

Well, sure. Four weeks after conception is only "two weeks pregnant" and is
typically when a woman first misses her period. It's hard to have an
abortion before even knowing that you are pregnant. The majority of
abortions occur between three weeks and eight weeks of pregnancy, with
earlier abortions becoming more common.

How does consciousness make one human?

That's a debate for philosophy, not science.

When I fall asleep am I not
human? Are people in comas not human?

Sure, and they are also human beings. There are two components of
consciousness: alertness or arousability, and contents of consciousness.
When both are gone, the person is gone - effectively dead, regardless of how
that's legally defined. When you wake up you don't start from scratch and
neither does a person in a coma, unless it's a persistent vegetative state,
meaning that the contents of consciousness have been destroyed (usually due
to oxygen deprivation).

He totally ignored explanations that it is something with the
potential to become human if it survives that far. And that there is
a continuous spectrum at one end of which it is human.

Explanations are ignored because you provide no evidence.

I've provided some. Are you going to respond? Are you even going to read
what I provided? (Including Googling - I don't have time to type it all out
again).

The quotes I provided
were often from scientific textbooks.

Did you read them?

I brought my evidence to the
table - you didn't bring anything but some easily refute illogical
arguments. You base your beliefs about the unborn on your opinion - I
base mine on science and reality.

And now you see how wrong you were. As the Pope says, science can't
determine death - only religion, in his view, opinion as it were, can do
that. All science can do is recognize the signs that tell us whether or not
something qualifies as "a human life" or "a dead person" in our own opinion
or in legal consensus.