Art Caplan has weighed in, with a piece for NBC News online, on the debate over the case of a thirteen-year-old California girl whose parents are suing to keep her on life support despite the fact that doctors have pronounced her brain dead. From the piece:
This case is so sad it is almost beyond description. But that fact should not be a reason to take the view that we don’t know what to do when someone is pronounced brain dead.
Brain dead is dead. It is as reliable a way to determine death as declaring that a person’s heart has forever stopped beating. In fact, due to the strict tests and procedures that have to be followed to determine brain death, it is probably even more error-free than pronouncing someone dead due to cardiac failure.
Brain death is not a coma. People wake up from comas—they still have brain activity. Brain death is not a vegetative state. People in a vegetative state still have some, minimal brain activity. Those who are brain dead have lost all brain activity except the random firing of a few cells. They will not come back.
For more, read the full piece.