New Posts
Bioethics group admits most people declared ‘brain dead’ actually have brain function
On April 11, 2024, the National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC) issued a landmark position statement, acknowledging that at least half of patients diagnosed as “brain dead” still have partial brain function. The NCBC statement was prompted by the 2023 updated guideline for the diagnosis of “brain death” published by the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) together with the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Child Neurology Society, and the Society of Critical Care Medicine.
According to the NCBC, the 2023 AAN updated guideline marks “a decisive breakdown in a shared understanding of brain death” and “a formal breach in a longstanding consensus in law and public policy” because this guideline does not conform to the current legal standard for “brain death” under the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA). The UDDA requires the “irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem.” But a part of the brain called the hypothalamus continues to provide neuroendocrine function in most patients declared “brain dead.” Is the hypothalamus important? According to the NCBC:
The hypothalamus can be understood as a kind of ‘smart’ coordinating center in the brain which is involved in regulating temperature, salt-water balance, sex drive, and sleep. Recent studies show that it may play a role in phenomenal awareness and pain detection.
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Abuse of Referrals for Psychiatric and Neuropsychological Assessment
More than 300 years (after the false accusations of the Salem witch trials), physicians who stand out from the crowd (e.g., innovators, physician whistleblowers, successful competitors) or who fail to conform to official government narratives often face mandatory referrals for psychiatric (psych) or neuropsychological (neuropsych) testing imposed by hospitals, medical boards, and physician health programs (PHPs). These referrals fall under the general category of Fitness for Duty Evaluations (FFDE). Hearsay, rumor, and suspicion are often all that is needed to force physicians to undergo psych and neuropsych testing.
Referrals for psych and neuropsych testing are sometimes made for the purpose of stigmatizing the physician, damaging the physician’s reputation, and harming the physician’s psyche. No objective evidence is provided to support the referral, and the required testing is done for reasons other than quality care and patient safety.
Full article here… You may be interested in other articles on this website…
‘Brain death’ is a fallacy used to prop up the organ harvesting industry
In 1968, without any tests, studies, or evidence, doctors began declaring certain comatose people brain dead. This diagnosis has always been controversial, as from its inception, the concept of brain death has lacked a clear basis in fact. In 2023, “Because of the lack of high-quality evidence on the subject […],” the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) actually used a majority vote, not the scientific method, in determining its new brain death diagnosis guideline.
The world-renowned neurologist and one-time supporter of brain death as death, Dr. D. Alan Shewmon, was not invited to cast his vote. He now opposes the brain death dogma on scientific grounds and recently published a paper addressing the fact that the new AAN guideline was written without any debate over the fundamental concept underlying brain death…
Interface of Politics, Medicine, and Biblical Ethics
“Brave New World: Second Panel Discussion on the Intersection of Politics, Medicine, & Theology”
Taken at the 2023 Faith & Medicine Conference, this panel discussion is the sequel to the 2022 panel discussion How Shall We Then Live? With the increasing threats of woke pseudo-science and civil government intrusions that deny creation and God’s design for the human body, how ought a Christian to think and respond? How do you live for …
Martin Selbrede, The Rev. Joe Morecraft, Dr. Heidi Klessig, and others…
Book Review: Medicare for All, Really?!: Why a Single Payer Healthcare Plan Would Be Disastrous for America
Medicare for All, Really?!: Why a Single Payer Healthcare Plan Would Be Disastrous for America, by Rich Yurkowitz, hardcover, 352 pp, $27.99, ISBN-13:9781645436782, Amplify Publishing, 2022.
This is an extraordinarily wellresearched, well-documented book that could easily serve as a graduatelevel dissertation. There are stylistic incongruities, as the conversational rhythm can slip from pleasant to simplistic in a way that might be distracting for some and pleasant to others. The graphics are elucidating, but on some occasions too small to read, or further interpretation within the context of the material would have been useful. Crucial points at times are lost in the minutiae of detailed, redundant tables, but other concepts are perfectly captured in an elegantly constructed image.
We Are Not Our Brains
We Are Not Our Brains
In my book, The Brain Death Fallacy, I quote neurologist James Bernat: “How the brain generates conscious awareness remains the most intractable mystery of and the greatest remaining challenge to neuroscience. As of 2018, neuroscientists have mapped many of the important connections necessary for human consciousness, but the essential neurophysiological and neurophilosophical problem of how brain tissue yields human subjective experience remains almost completely unknown.”
In Consciousness and Human Identity, philosopher Jerry Fodor puts it more bluntly, “Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. So much for the philosophy of consciousness.”
The traditional view of humankind is that we have a dual nature as a body-spirit unity. We have a physical body which is directed by an immaterial soul or spirit. Very few people are pure materialists, believing we are just “meat in motion.” But strangely, the notion continues that with just a little more research, we will discover how the physical brain imagines, rejoices, fears, or is ashamed. And the relatively new concept of “brain death” is the result of equating people with their physical brains. If we are our brains, when our brains stop functioning, we cease to exist.
Winter Journal of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons
Some titles for this issue include:
The COVID Debacle: Merging Criminal Law and Medical Science for Accountability
A Noble Profession – If You Can Keep It
Beyond Negative Evidence: the Disputes on DNA Contamination of COVID-19 Vaccines
Biblical Faith, Medicine, and the State
This is the twelfth in a series of articles about addiction treatment pioneer Dr. Punyamurtula S. Kishore and his ongoing battle with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which shuttered his fifty-two clinics in late 2011, dramatically increasing the state’s death tolls due to opioid addiction. Space forbids repeating the story developed in the first eleven articles. Readers new to this story are urged to catch up before reading on (links/references are provided at the end of this article).
New Book: The Brain Death Fallacy
The Brain Death Fallacy by Heidi Klessig… hot off the press at Amazon (below):
In 1968, a committee at Harvard Medical School redefined comatose people on a ventilator as dead. This redefinition of death was introduced in 1981 as a model law referred to as the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA). Now, “brain death” has become codified as a law that defines death in the United States. However, is brain death death? Dr. Heidi Klessig traces the history of the diagnosis from its beginnings to the passage of the UDDA and more recent attempts to loosen the law further. For the most part, the public is unaware of this ongoing debate, but it impacts them directly after a loved one has a head injury and requires a ventilator. This book is built on the clinical work and academic research of medical doctors, philosophers, and scholars who do not accept the UDDA definition of brain death as death and are experts in this field of study.