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“It was literally like she had died,” Jim said. “Her personality was gone.” This is a great example of how modern medicine has made "death" a very vague term.
by AngryParsley 15y ago
“It was literally like she had died,” Jim said. “Her personality was gone.”
This is a great example of how modern medicine has made "death" a very vague term. More and more often, we can keep bodies alive but we can't recover the memories and personality in the brain. For most practical purposes, Su Meck died in 1988. Fortunately in this case the damage wasn't completely permanent, and a new Su Meck made a life for herself. Still, the law doesn't recognize this and Su Meck 2.0 is beholden to contracts and commitments made by Su Meck 1.0. The law is slow to react to technological advances, so I think this problem will only get worse as medicine gets better.
- meric 15y agoYeah, but the law also allowed her husband and children to stay by her side.
- BasDirks 15y agoAlso a great example of how abuse of the word has made "literally" a very vague term!
- knowtheory 15y agoThe law, regardless of what it aspires to, is designed to accommodate the many, and deal with exceptions on a case by case basis. The things that have happened to Su Meck are a rarity in every sense of the word. Her circumstances are so exceptional that it seems weird to carve out exceptions in the law, and really should be accommodated by the parties which she would have previously formed contracts with. On top of that, the law is supposed to draw up distinctions and standards that can be used as yardsticks and metrics, and where there is genuine confusion and vagueness, the law may not have enough clarity from societal standards, or agreement from the medical establishment to be able to draw up reasonable measures.
- chroma 15y agoI think the OP's point is that Su Mecks are rare today, but they will happen more often as technology can save more people. Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information-theoretic_death http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information-theoretic_death seems to have fewer edge-cases than our current criteria for declaring death.
- Symmetry 15y agoThats true, but for common law countries at least we can start having judges work out precedent for how to deal with this stuff when it starts to become an issue. In a certain sense its inelegant to rely on the entities executing the law being Turing complete, but thats what we do.
- corin_ 15y agoIt's not just a problem of law vs. technology. For example, what if there was a law that she wasn't still bound by old contracts... suddenly anyone in debt could just fake memory loss? Now, clearly in this example it wasn't faked, and it would be hard to fake in such a realistic way, but... impossible? Seems very unlikely.