In his commentary, Ho cited Nakajima’s observation that “…we know how to deal with the living-decently. We also know how to treat someone whose hear has stopped for good-with respect…But this respect seemed sidelined in a brain-dead person for the ‘greater good’ of prolonging the lives of others.” Do you think it is right to sideline the respect for a brain-dead person in order to prolong the lives of others? Write a short response, drawing from the text as well as from your own examples and experiences.
It is definitely not right to sideline respect for a brain-dead person based on moral grounds. In the case of using harmful, true death-accelerating drugs to preserve the integrity of the organs to be transplanted, I view this with utter disgust. Already, the receiver can be seen as needing such organs to be transplanted, but yet, in order for him to live a few more days comfortably/not live a few more uncomfortable days, he must take away the same number of days to his donor-his saviour. Is it right to hurt someone who is helping you? I do not think so.
If the really dead can be respected by members of the living, then why is respect not accorded to the benefactors who are still biologically alive, although mental processes have shut down already? Would this not be a great irony of our millennium? It is an unwritten law in many religious doctrines that as long as a person lives, his right to living must not be taken away. Somehow, this now sounds like an accusation of murder. While I did not intend to do so, however doctors by hastening the patient’s deaths are indeed catalyzing the irreversible final process of death.
When my grandfather was announced to brain-dead, I was too young to understand what it meant technically. All I knew was that he would never be what he used to be. No more games in the playground, no one to call grandfather. Yet even though the whole family was aware, there was always this clinging on to hope, that he would smile and call us by our names again-one day. This was not denial, but a great emotional need to comfort ourselves. Having experienced this agony, I can imagine what worse the brain-dead patients’ families are feeling having to see their family member being ‘killed’ and that drugs are administered to speed up their death-an additional charge! It is emotions that make us different from animals. If we were to be selfish and engage in such acts, it would make us no more than barbarians-or even animals.
-10:29 AM-
IDIOT.