Baby Theresa

Is a dead body a person? I mean, the only difference between a living person and a dead one, medically, is that the brain has ceased operation.But according to what you imply, the death of the brain can't be taken as the end of the person. Shouldn't we rethink the whole idea of post-mortem organ donation according to your position? The whole idea of embalmment and burial, for that matter?

I guess I don't see how that's the case. Could you elaborate? Sure. And we allow the kin of certain individuals, who are JW's, to dispose of the remains of those individuals according to their own conscience.Why can't the same thing apply here? If all the kin and professionals agree that this person is dead, surely they can dispose of the remains according to their own conscience? Why should they be limited by the differing beliefs of others? We don't limit the JW's; we don't force them to surrender their dead for organ extraction, because we recognize that they have differing beliefs about the end of life.I get that people disagree about what constitutes a person. I just don't see where, in your implication, there's a basis for dictating one side of that debate to everybody.

The organs have to be alive to be donated, so it's not clear to me how you expect this to be a useful guide. By the time we could harvest organs according to your guidelines, they would be dead and useless.

You're right, of course. It's all determined by the hats.