When am I not human anymore?

[Beer With Straw]

"People also ask

Can a person who is brain dead recovery?

Mechanical support (a breathing machine) keeps oxygen going to the organs until they can be recovered for transplant. The machine is not keeping the patient alive (brain death is irreversible and is legally and medically recognized as death), it is merely keeping the organs viable until they can be recovered."

Are, or should it be lawful to give less rights to a person who has some brain eating disease? Could there be stages?

:EDIT:

Oh yeah, the horrible thing that feasts on your soul! :leaf:

https://www.medicinenet.com/naegleria_infection/article.htm

 

[Bronzeage]

Everyone has rights, but the inability to exercise a right renders it superfluous.

Do I still have freedom of speech, when cannot, and never again, will speak?

 

[Beer With Straw]

Everyone has rights, but the inability to exercise a right renders it superfluous.

Do I still have freedom of speech, when cannot, and never again, will speak?

I was thinking say like murder being reduced to cruelty to animals, or something.

 

[Bronzeage]

Everyone has rights, but the inability to exercise a right renders it superfluous.

Do I still have freedom of speech, when cannot, and never again, will speak?

I was thinking say like murder being reduced to cruelty to animals, or something.

Brain dead people are given a different consideration when if comes to the total cessation of life functions. While it is prohibited by law to deprive a person of oxygen and thus kill them, there is no law which states we must provide oxygen to a person who cannot absorb it by their own natural means. When a body is being sustained by mechanical means, cutting off the machines, is not murder.

 

[Beer With Straw]

Everyone has rights, but the inability to exercise a right renders it superfluous.

Do I still have freedom of speech, when cannot, and never again, will speak?

I was thinking say like murder being reduced to cruelty to animals, or something.

Brain dead people are given a different consideration when if comes to the total cessation of life functions. While it is prohibited by law to deprive a person of oxygen and thus kill them, there is no law which states we must provide oxygen to a person who cannot absorb it by their own natural means. When a body is being sustained by mechanical means, cutting off the machines, is not murder.

I mean like, walk up to someone who has the neocortex the size of a dog and shoot them in the head. (At Walmart of course.)

:EDIT:

Oh, and as to the amoeba, the brain cells are a quantification of who you are or as a person and "watching" something slowly eating YOU and living it its feaces that was YOU! That'd make a cool horror flick and I'm stoned right now.

http://www.funscience.in/study-zone/Biology/Excretion/ExcretionInAmoeba.php

 

[Bronzeage]

Brain dead people are given a different consideration when if comes to the total cessation of life functions. While it is prohibited by law to deprive a person of oxygen and thus kill them, there is no law which states we must provide oxygen to a person who cannot absorb it by their own natural means. When a body is being sustained by mechanical means, cutting off the machines, is not murder.

I mean like, walk up to someone who has the neocortex the size of a dog and shoot them in the head. (At Walmart of course.)

:EDIT:

Oh, and as to the amoeba, the brain cells are a quantification of who you are or as a person and "watching" something slowly eating YOU and living it its feaces that was YOU! That'd make a cool horror flick and I'm stoned right now.

http://www.funscience.in/study-zone/Biology/Excretion/ExcretionInAmoeba.php

Never would have guessed. Have you considered that our solar system could be an atom in the fingernail of a giant being?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

My take on it:

Personhood (which is what we should be protecting) extends from first consciousness to last consciousness. After the last consciousness personhood is gone. The hard part is being sure that consciousness will not return--but if brain activity is zero that point has been reached.

You're human even after you're dead. It's a human corpse, not a monkey corpse.

 

[BH]

This is an interesting issue. A lot of people pro-life have no problem pulling the plug on a brain dead person but think it murder to abort a fetus without the ability to have conciousness yet.

 

[Beer With Straw]

My take on it:

Personhood (which is what we should be protecting) extends from first consciousness to last consciousness. After the last consciousness personhood is gone. The hard part is being sure that consciousness will not return--but if brain activity is zero that point has been reached.

You're human even after you're dead. It's a human corpse, not a monkey corpse.

How much consciousness does a single brain cell possess?

 

[Beer With Straw]

Well, I just got convicted of indecent exposure, theft, trespassing and whatever charge pooping on someone's lawn was... The judge didn't buy my defense that: "I wasn't thinking at the time".

My dog didn't get charged with anything for doing the exact same things (neither did he have any complaints about the sausage).

There's something wrong with these laws I'd say.

 

[Underseer]

If you think people who oppose fascism are "exactly as bad" as actual Nazis waving actual Nazi flags, you are no longer human.

 

[fromderinside]

OP is a problem even here in Oregon where end of life needn't be cruel by law. No one really knows when one shuts down so the unexpected isn't covered even here.

I'm thinking the most humane way to treat incompacitation without possibility of communication is to let a family group grope form decision on how to treat one who was one dearly loved who can't reciprocate carry out prior expressed wishes. We all should take EOL crises seriously enough to leave written, recorded, thoughts prior to any possible catastrophe. Failing that, prepare to lie there and go broke whilc your family twists and turns in grief.

On a personal note, We have messages our family has in their possession for such circumstance.

 

[ryan]

This is an important issue for the future of brain downloading. If I download my brain into a computer as I wait for my new body, I am more than brain dead; I don't even have a brain anymore. It should certainly be murder if someone smashed my hard drive.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This is an important issue for the future of brain downloading. If I download my brain into a computer as I wait for my new body, I am more than brain dead; I don't even have a brain anymore. It should certainly be murder if someone smashed my hard drive.

Agreed. In my book destroying the mind is murder, period. (I think leaving someone in a permanent vegetative state should be considered murder.)

 

[Tom Sawyer]

This is an important issue for the future of brain downloading. If I download my brain into a computer as I wait for my new body, I am more than brain dead; I don't even have a brain anymore. It should certainly be murder if someone smashed my hard drive.

Is it, though?

I can understand the argument that if downloading your brain into a new body is proven technology then destroying the hard drive with the brain information on it while it’s in transit would be an act of murder, but if it’s done at the point where it’s just a sales technique where they download your brain and maybe the a procedure will become a real thing sometime in the future and maybe someone will remember that there’s a group of hard drives in a warehouse somewhere which signed up for that a couple of centuries ago, then there’s no murder because there is no person involved.

 

[humbleman]

Enough!

What is next: a guy coming to these forums and said somebody have stolen his mind?

You are not human anymore when you do things that the most savage beasts do.

For this reason the word "inhumane" was created.

Abortionists must be included in this definition.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Never mind. Don’t want to contribute to the derail.

 

[fromderinside]

I believe Bowels famously resolved the morality issue on that topic. He moved.

 

[Underseer]

This is an interesting issue. A lot of people pro-life have no problem pulling the plug on a brain dead person but think it murder to abort a fetus without the ability to have conciousness yet.

"Pro-life" people also seem to think that life loses all value at birth, at least if their stated policies are anything to go by.

 

[TSwizzle]

This is an important issue for the future of brain downloading. If I download my brain into a computer as I wait for my new body, I am more than brain dead; I don't even have a brain anymore. It should certainly be murder if someone smashed my hard drive.

This reminded me of a story I read in a science fiction comic years ago. I think it was called 2000AD. Basically a very wealthy obnoxious guy gets a super doctor to replace body parts that fail with manufactured parts. Over a long period of time, the guy's body is entirely made up of replacement parts. All except his brain. Then comes a breakthrough where the guy's brain can be downloaded onto a chip and that replaces the brain. After this procedure, the doctor destroys (kills) the guy with the exclamation that he can't be charged for murder because he was destroying a machine, not a human.