Comments related to ethics, or how we should live
When someone is clearly alive we tend to understand.
We also tend to understand when someone is clearly dead and ready to bury. There is no brain function, there is no movement in the body (including no breathing) and there is no flow of blood (the heart is not beating). Other signs of life are gone as well. the body is cold, dry, pale, either stiff with rigor mortis or flaccid.
Dying is a period of time between living and death. … Read the rest
I have already Commented on the question, Are those who fail to pass brain stem function tests really dead? (read blog entry Organ-donation – Are Brain Dead Really Dead?) In this entry I would like to consider another approach to the claim that those who are brain dead are really dead.
The argument accepts the biblical view that when a person is dead then the neurologic (brain), circulatory (heart), and respiratory (Lungs) systems are each dead.
In order to maintain the biblical requirement for death, the argument goes something like this. … Read the rest
Do organ donation and abortion have something in common? This may seem like an odd question. But the question does arise when one considers both organ donation and abortion in light of personhood or in light of what it means to be a person.
Many Christians reject abortion from the point of conception, citing conception as the beginning of a person’s life. Some pro-abortion people accept abortion in the early stages of pregnancy claiming that the embryo/fetus in early pregnancy is not yet a person. … Read the rest
Organ donation can seem like a positive thing. The life of a young child, a teenage, a mother, a father, a business man, a loved one can be spared. Many deaths seem to come about because of failure of one organ or another. If we can replace the failing organ, we can continue to live. Is not the Christian ethic to promote life?
Of course, vital organs, those organs necessary for the body to live, can not be taken out of a person and that person continue to live. … Read the rest