New Posts
‘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.
Homegrown Epidemic of Drug Abuse
The White House reported that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified prescription drug abuse as an epidemic. The 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) reported that 4.9 million people, 1.9% of the population, abused prescription drugs. Nonmedical use of psychotherapeutics, particularly pain relievers, was the most commonly used illicit substance after marijuana. “In our military, illicit drug use increased from 5% to 12% among active duty service members from 2005 to 2008, primarily due to non-medical use of prescription drugs.” Drug induced deaths have almost doubled since 1999 and are now second only to motor vehicle fatalities.
At the end of 2013, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN) published a list of the top 17 abused drugs of 2013. The table below combines most of the given statistical information in the list of abused drugs and presented them in rank order, from one to seventeen.
This article continued here.
Using People with ‘Brain Death’ as Lab Rats
by Heidi Klessig, M.D.
Doctors at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the NYU Langone Transplant Institute in New York City reported successfully implanting genetically modified pig kidneys into two “brain dead” men this month. The New York patient, a 57-year-old man, has demonstrated continuous kidney function for over a month, the longest time that a gene-edited pig kidney has functioned successfully in a human. The team plans to observe the patient’s kidney functioning until mid-September, during which time he is being provided with cardiopulmonary support in a critical care setting.
In Alabama, a 52-year-old man with both “brain death” and renal failure underwent removal of his native kidneys and was implanted with a pig kidney that had received ten genetic modifications. In contrast to last year’s results (in which the xenograft kidney placed into the “brain dead” person failed to function properly), Dr. Jayme E. Locke and her team reported that this time, the xenograft kidney functioned well for the full seven-day study period, which included daily kidney biopsies.