How do you constitute someone is dead? How does culture apply to “brain-dead” patients?
In reference to my anthropology class of comparative study of death, Dr. McCoy defines death as something that begins with a process and ends with a state. Whereas, being dead is a state or condition that the person or body is in and an end of the process of dying. The concept of death is a condition that most people want to avoid or is a taboo in some cultures to talk about. In American society, death is increasingly medicalized and powerful. “Deferring death becomes more important than attending to the soul or preparation for the afterlife or the next life…it becomes more important even than a patient’s inability to do any of these tasks” (Krakauer 390).
Margaret Lock’s article explores the concept of living cadavers and how “being dead” is translated in hospital settings in America Japan
In a majority of cases, cultural factors such as religious beliefs, the media, and the law are deeply implicated in clinical situations. Defining what “dead” really is very controversial cross-culturally. In the U.S, Is there a universal definition of death? Does having a loss of consciousness mean you’re dead? Or not breathing on your own constitute a person is dead? Cartesian dualism continues to factor into the subject of death as a physical versus mental state.
According to Eric L. Krakauer’s article “To Be Freed from the Infirmity of (the) Age,” he discuses the privileged position of medical technology in Descartes’ work and explain the danger of the Cartesian quest to technologically master death. As previously stated in articles we’ve read, the body is like a machine. When our body wears out or breaks down, medicine is there to repair or replace any damages which can free us from “the infirmity of age.” For many years, medicine has existed to defer death. The danger of medicine is how it has depended on technology so much that is has shaped the way we think. When we view illnesses and diseases, we rely more on objective thinking rather than subjective. His term “mastering objectification” emphasizes how technology has helped to address the infirmity, suffering, and death; thus, individuals attempt to master death. In hospitals, equipment such as ventilators and tube feeding help those who are by definition “brain-dead” or in between life and dead. As a result, we have medicalized death by making it into a medical-technological problem that requires primarily medical intervention (Krakauer 388). Krakauer’s article reflects how the means of health and happiness involves being technologically sustained. He further mentions how palliative medicine is a form of medical discipline that helps reduces the severity of a disease. “[Palliative medicine] recognizes the important of trying to clarify a diagnosis and to master a symptom or disease. But it also recognizes that all such clarification risks obscuring the singular suffering of the other and that all such mastery risks forgetting the ultimate unmasterability of death” (Krakauer 392). Moreover, biomedical ethics play a crucial role for individual patients and hospital. Their code for constituting what death is based on these the machines, displays an example of how technology determines our way of thinking.
Karen Ann Quinlan (March 29, 1954 – June 11, 1985)One well-known case that involved questioning the practice of medicine and an individual’s morals was the controversial debate of Karen Ann Quinlan. At age twenty-one, she suffered from a cardiopulmonary arrest due to an over-consumption of drugs and alcohol. For several months, she lapsed into a persistent vegetative state (PVS) where her condition was believed to be irreversible. She was kept alive on a ventilator for several months.
Her parents, both devout Catholics, requested that the hospital discontinue active care and allow “nature” to take its course. The parents request was refused by the hospital because her condition did not meet the criteria for brain death. Eventually, subsequent battles made headline news and the court ruled in the parents’ favor by removing the ventilator. For almost a decade, she surprised many by continuing to breathe unaided until her death from pneumonia in 1985. Was this homicide? In the end, the court concluded that her death was due to natural causes. Her case continues to raise significant questions about religious beliefs, medical ethics, legal guardianship, and civil rights.
A majority of situations like the Quinlan case involves this dilemma of medicine versus morals. Both of these articles reflect how code of ethics, culture, religious beliefs, the law, and other social factors may interfere with patients who are dying. They closely examine how people are pooled to different sides that involve the criteria for death. Does death mean that a person loses permanent and irreversible function in the heart and lungs? Or is it when the brain loses cognitive functions? Both of these criteria are involved with what constitutes someone dead.
Works cited
Krakauer, Eric L. 2007. “To Be Freed from the Infirmity of (the) Age”: Subjectivity, Life-Sustaining Treatment, and Palliative Medicine.” In Subjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations. Joao Biehl, Byron Good, and Arthur Kleinman, eds. Berkeley University of California
Lock, Margaret. 2004. “Living Cadavers and the Calculation of Death.” Body and Society 10(2-3): 135-152.
Dr. Rene McCoy Lecture notes January 5, 2011
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