3 ms·
They do not have agency and so are functionally dead.
by svnt 4y ago
They do not have agency and so are functionally dead.
- User23 4y agoThis is a good example of a premise that isn’t generally acceptable. If we agree that persons who lack agency have no right to not be killed then we can kill infants, the severely mentally ill, involuntarily commited persons, and arguably severely physically disabled persons. Not to mention, determining who does and doesn’t have agency and thus a right to not be killed strikes me as considerably trickier than the basic medical definition of dead, which is basically no heartbeat. Hence the observation that cold and dead might not really be dead. Severe hypothermia can make the pulse undetectable.
- hbrn 4y ago> basic medical definition of dead, which is basically no heartbeat This is an extremely reductive statement. There is no unified medical definition of death, precisely because it's a highly controversial topic. Closest to what you're trying to say is UDDA (which, ironically, is currently being revised), and it explicitly mentions brain death: "An individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Determination_of_Death_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Determination_of_Death...