What are extraordinary
means? By my
standards, I believe
if you cannot
breathe for yourself,
your heart cannot
function, and machines
are doing the
‘living’ for you, this
is extraordinary
means. Whether
a person is dead or not
is usually determine
by if the brain
is ‘dead’ or not.
So a person may not
be able to function,
but have activity
in their brain and therefore
still be
considered alive.
But is it worth keeping these people alive? It’s
hardly natural.
And does this idea of letting nature take it’s
course when someone
would be dead if not for extraordinary
means apply to revival
techniques such as CPR? When I was
presented with this,
CPR was acceptable to me. I think because
it doesn’t seem like
such a drastic measure to keep someone
alive. Maybe it’s
because of how media [movies especially]
present this, but CPR
doesn’t seem like such an unnatural way to
revive someone.
I think then, anything with machines doing
things that a human
body should be able to do simply to live is
to be considered extraordinary
means. Sure, some people may
be angered or torn with
this, especially if they or a loved one
uses or used extraordinary
means to stay alive.
Another point that shocked
me was a story of a woman who was
braindead – meaning
that the brain was totally unable to do
anything including breathing,
heartbeat etc. and had no activity
at all who was being
kept alive because she was pregnant.
Definitely unnatural
and I don’t think I found out about the baby,
but imagine being in
the womb of a dead mother? It’s creepy –
definitely something
right out of a horror story. Someone recently
pointed out to me that
this does not happen often however because
the first thing that
doctors do is try to deliver the baby prematurely.
It is only in extreme
cases where the child cannot be removed that this would be a problem.