“Brain Dead” is NOT Dead! LIVE people are murdered daily for organs and to “save money”
You MUST KNOW that “no brain activity” means NOTHING except that doctors didn’t do the tests that would find the brain activity. Don’t let your loved one be killed.
Brucha Weisberger
BS”D
From the beginning of time, people knew that cessation of heartbeat and breath meant death. This is the G-d-given definition, and it is logical. Since it’s real, this definition does not require anything to “prop it up.”
Of course, G-d, Who creates life, is the only One Who has the authority to say when it ends, and to end it. Unfortunately, two motivations came into play in the 20th century to create a new, and false, “definition” of death.
Marina Zhang at Epoch Times explains in her June 2024 article, “Brain-Dead People May Not Be Dead—Here’s Why.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/are-brain-dead-people-really-dead-5629496
The definition of brain death, also known as death by neurological criteria, is when a person falls into a permanent coma, loses their brainstem reflexes and consciousness, and can’t breathe without stimulus or support.
Yet a person’s heart can be beating, his or her organs functional, and he or she can fight off infection, grow, and even carry babies to term. (Delivery of a Healthy Baby from a Brain-Dead Woman After 117 Days of Somatic Support: A Case Report - PMC
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8141338/)
Though they may exhibit no signs of consciousness, some areas of the brain may still work. About 50 percent of brain-death patients retain activity in their hypothalamus, which coordinates the body’s endocrine system and regulates body temperature.
However, all of this stops if they are taken off life support.
What is the big rush to declare death and take people off of breathing assistance?
First, there is a need for transplant organs, and second, a wish to “save resources” by having people hurry up and die already.
From Rachel Aviv’s article in the New Yorker, 2018:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/what-does-it-mean-to-die
Until the nineteen-sixties, cardio-respiratory failure was the only way to die. The notion that death could be diagnosed in the brain didn’t emerge until after the advent of the modern ventilator, allowing what was known at the time as “oxygen treatment”: as long as blood carrying oxygen reached the heart, it could continue to beat. In 1967, Henry Beecher, a renowned bioethicist at Harvard Medical School, wrote to a colleague, “It would be most desirable for a group at Harvard University to come to some subtle conclusion as to a new definition of death.” Permanently comatose patients, maintained by mechanical ventilators, were “increasing in numbers over the land and there are a number of problems which should be faced up to.”
Beecher created a committee comprising men who already knew one another: ten doctors, one lawyer, one historian, and one theologian. In less than six months, they completed a report, which they published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The only citation in the article was from a speech by the Pope. They proposed that the irreversible destruction of the brain should be defined as death, giving two reasons: to relieve the burden on families and hospitals, which were providing futile care to patients who would never recover, and to address the fact that “obsolete criteria for the definition of death can lead to controversy in obtaining organs for transplantation,” a field that had developed rapidly; in the previous five years, doctors had performed the world’s first transplant of a pancreas, a liver, a lung, and a heart. In an earlier draft, the second reason was stated more directly: “There is great need for the tissues and organs of the hopelessly comatose in order to restore to health those who are still salvageable.” (The sentence was revised after Harvard’s medical dean wrote that “the connotation of this statement is unfortunate.”)
In the next twelve years, twenty-seven states rewrote their definitions of death to conform to the Harvard committee’s conclusions. Thousands of lives were prolonged or saved every year because patients declared brain-dead—a form of death eventually adopted by the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and most of Europe—were now eligible to donate their organs. The philosopher Peter Singer described it as “a concept so desirable in its consequences that it is unthinkable to give up, and so shaky on its foundations that it can scarcely be supported.” The new death was “an ethical choice masquerading as a medical fact,” he wrote.
Legal ambiguities remained—people considered alive in one region of the country could be declared dead in another—and, in 1981, the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems proposed a uniform definition and theory of death. Its report, which was endorsed by the American Medical Association, stated that death is the moment when the body stops operating as an “integrated whole.” Even if life continues in individual organs and cells, the person is no longer alive, because the functioning organs are merely a collection of artificially maintained subsystems that will inevitably disintegrate. “The heart usually stops beating within two to ten days,” the report said.
The commission’s staff philosopher, Daniel Wikler, a professor at Harvard and the first staff ethicist for the World Health Organization, told me that he didn’t think the commission’s theory of death was supported by the scientific facts it cited. “I thought it was demonstrably untrue, but so what?” he said. “I didn’t see a downside at the time.” Wikler told the commission that it would be more logical to say that death occurred when the cerebrum—the center for consciousness, thoughts, and feelings, the properties essential to having a personal identity—was destroyed. His formulation would have rendered a much broader population of patients, including those who could breathe on their own, dead.
Despite Wikler’s reservations, he drafted the third chapter of the report, “Understanding the ‘Meaning’ of Death.” “I was put in a tight spot, and I fudged,” he told me. “I knew that there was an air of bad faith about it. I made it seem like there are a lot of profound unknowns and went in the direction of fuzziness, so that no one could say, ‘Hey, your philosopher says this is nonsense.’ That’s what I thought, but you’d never know from what I wrote.”
So much for “brain dead” being a scientific definition.
It is truly horrifying to contemplate that living, feeling people have their vital organs barbarically cut out while they are alive. Organs must be “harvested” from live donors in order to be viable. Live, in the true sense of the word - the heart is beating. (As you will see in this article, there is awareness, as well, even if the person cannot express it.)
From Marina Zhang’s ET article:
Among European anesthesiologists, there is an ongoing debate about whether brain-dead organ donors should be given consciousness blockers during organ procurement.
Some argue that they should do so in case patients feel pain. Others disagree. Surprisingly, the anesthesiologists’ position is “not based on the claim that patients were incapable of experiencing pain,” but, instead, out of concern that the public might have doubts about the brain-death diagnosis, bioethicists Dr. Robert Truog and Franklin Miller (who has a doctorate in philosophy) wrote in their book, “Death, Dying, and Organ Transplantation.”
Dr. Ronald Dworkin, a research fellow and anesthesiologist, wrote in an article on organ procurement that he chose to give consciousness blockers because he thought his patient “might still be a ‘little alive’, [sic] whatever that means.”
Mr. Miller, who is also a professor of medical ethics in medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, said the label of brain death is misleading. He and Dr. Truog, professor of anesthesiology and director emeritus of the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics, are of the opinion that brain-dead people are alive but likely will not regain consciousness and recover.
See this chilling account by a doctor, in the ET article:
It was 1989, and she was still a resident anesthesiologist, Dr. Heidi Klessig recalled in her book, “The Brain Death Fallacy.”
One day, her attending anesthesiologist told her to prepare a brain-dead organ donor for organ removal surgery.
Upon examining the patient, Dr. Klessig was surprised to find that the man looked exactly like every other critically ill, living patient and, in fact, better than most.
“He was warm, his heart was beating, and his monitors showed stable vital signs,” Dr. Klessig wrote. “Nevertheless, on his bedside exam, he checked all the boxes for brain death, and the neurologist declared him ‘dead.’”
Dr. Klessig’s supervising attending anesthesiologist asked her what anesthesia she was going to give the donor for the operation.
Her answer was a paralyzing agent so the donor wouldn’t move during surgery, as well as some fentanyl to blunt the body’s responses to pain.
The anesthesiologist looked at her and asked, “Well, are you going to give anything to block consciousness?”
Dr. Klessig was stunned. Consciousness blockers are given to patients to ensure they aren’t awake and aware during an operation.
Her education told her that brain-dead patients should not be conscious; apart from having a biologically active body, their minds were gone.
“I looked at him and said, ‘Why would I do that? Isn’t he dead?’”
Her attending anesthesiologist looked at her and asked, “Why don’t you give him something to block consciousness—just in case.”
“I get a pit in my stomach every time I remember his face,” Dr. Klessig told The Epoch Times. “I remember him looking at me over his mask ... It seemed very confusing.
Please don’t miss the extremely powerful video testimony above.
It is horrific to realize that parents and other family members are routinely told that their child or loved one is “dead” because of absence of “brain activity” when in reality, the person is alive, and will die only when the family agrees to to having the respirator unplugged - in order words, to have their relative murdered.
Someone that I know personally told me of an immensely tragic case that he was was involved with, in which a brain-injured child whom he was helping to heal after she had been declared “brain dead,” was murdered after he was removed from the premises. The child had been making progress towards recovery. He knows of many other similar cases. In one case, the child’s father witnessed with his own eyes the nurse giving the child an injection, after which the child’s heart stopped - but the nurse denied administering anything.
This person that I know told me of a doctor in Louisiana, Dr. Paul Harch, who has helped scores of “brain dead” children and adults to become completely well again - using a walk-in hyperbaric oxygen chamber which accommodates people on life support.
Dr. Harch uses a special test that can pick up brain activity not picked up on standard brain tests - but hospitals refuse to use it.
Why do the powers-that-be want people dead, so badly?
Here are some stories which clearly illustrate how very much alive people who are pronounced “brain dead” actually are. Most of them were collected on this website:
https://www.respectforhumanlife.com/survivors
Harrison Elmer: Three week old boy with meningitis had life support machine turned off - but staged a miracle recovery
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/three-week-old-boy-meningitis-6733061
Harrison had become desperately ill after being struck down by meningitis and doctors said they could do no more.
Scans showed he was completely brain dead.
Heartbroken Samantha Baker, 22, and Adam Ellmer, 26, chose to take Harrison to a hospice so he could pass away peacefully by their side.
But after the machine was turned off, little Harrison not only managed to breathe on his own, he began an incredible journey back to health.
Now he is about to reach his third birthday, and is hitting all the milestones as expected.
Samantha, a full-time mum, said: “When Harrison's life support was switched off we never imagined he would continue to breathe.
“We were all so heartbroken when we were told he wasn't going to survive, it felt like a real miracle.
“Despite surviving, doctors still warned us that he would never be able to walk or talk.
“We were terrified but so thankful he had survived that we just took each day as it came.”
Jahi Mcmath 2000 - 2018 Declared "Brain Dead" in the state of California in December 2013. She lived five more years in New Jersey post diagnosis
Jahi’s case is particularly tragic because it didn’t have to happen - she had surgery to remove her tonsils, because of sleep apnea which caused her exhaustion and difficulty focusing. Her post-op observation was grossly lacking, and her unusual bleeding was ignored. Jahi hemorrhaged and lost her pulse. Doctors declared her “brain dead,” but her mother never gave up. She fought and fought against the furious medical “professionals:”
On December 19th, ten days after the surgery, David Durand, the hospital’s senior vice-president and chief medical officer, held a meeting with the family. They asked Durand to allow Jahi to remain on the ventilator [for six more days], suggesting that the swelling in her brain might subside. Durand said no. They also asked that she be given a feeding tube. Durand dismissed this request, too. The idea that the procedure would help her recover was an “absurd notion,” he later wrote, and would only add to the “illusion that she is not dead.”
When they persisted, Durand asked, “What is it that you don’t understand?” According to Jahi’s mother, stepfather, grandmother, brother, and Dolan, who took notes, Durand pounded his fist on the table, saying, “She’s dead, dead, dead.”
Jahi’s mother wouldn’t give up, and moved Jahi to another state. Her family constantly spoke with her and stimulated her. Despite having a death certificate, Jahi was clearly alive. She would move her hands and feet in response to requests, and even began menstruating (a process mediated by the hypothalamus, near the front of the brain.)
On the (MRI) scans, Machado observed that Jahi’s brain stem was nearly destroyed. The nerve fibres that connect the brain’s right and left hemispheres were barely recognizable. But large areas of her cerebrum, which mediates consciousness, language, and voluntary movements, were structurally intact.
Unfortunately, Jahi passed away of liver failure after five years of devoted care and of progress.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/what-does-it-mean-to-die
On Thursday, a senior doctor told the High Court she was "shocked" when a baby declared brain stem dead after two tests began breathing by himself two weeks later.
The court heard that ventilation continued on the four-month-old after he was declared dead because there was an ongoing legal dispute.
In July, doctors treating him at a London hospital were forced to rescind "the clinical ascertainment of death" after a nurse noticed the infant had independent rhythmic breathing.
Mr Justice Hayden, who has been asked by Guys' and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust to decide what is in the baby's best interests, said the juxtaposition of a baby being declared dead but then breathing independently is "striking even for those of us experienced in these cases". He called the test "unreliable".
The doctor said the "wording" of the test could be changed to include a warning about the test's reliability.
She said she had approached the AMRC to explain what happened, saying it would be "problematic" if news of the test's unreliability "got out in the public domain".
The brain stem test is a clinical test done when there is clear evidence of serious brain damage that cannot be cured. It is a series of mini tests to check the brain's automatic functions including reaction to light in the eyes, ice-cold water in the ear and a short period off a ventilator to see whether a patient attempts to take a breath.
Lewis Roberts
In March 2021, 18-year-old Lewis Roberts was declared brain stem dead after a road accident but began breathing independently hours before his organs were to be extracted for donation. Today he is well enough to play football and basketball.
Last month his sister told Sky News the test is done too soon.
"They rushed it through," she said.
"Eight months ago he was sat in a wheelchair, his eyes were gone, he couldn't speak. From how he was then to how he is now, that just shows that the brain can heal given the time."
https://news.sky.com/story/brain-death-test-in-uk-under-review-after-baby-declared-dead-began-breathing-independently-12681630
It’s not only young people who can have miraculous recoveries. Here, a woman in her seventies who had a severe heart attack made a comeback after 6 days of a flat EEG.
This story by Judy Doobov, from the book Small Miracles for the Jewish Heart, was republished on Chabad.org.
After sustaining a severe heart attack in 1973, my grandmother sank into a deep coma and was placed on life support systems in the hospital. Her EEG was totally flat, indicating zero brain activity. She was hooked up both to a pacemaker that made her heart beat artificially and a respirator that made her lungs breathe artificially. But technically, as the doctors told me privately, she was basically as good as dead. "She'll never come out of the coma," they said, "and she's better off this way. If she did, her life would be meaningless. She'd exist in a purely vegetative state.
Even though she was in her mid-seventies and had lived a full life, I refused to believe that my beloved grandmother could simply slip away like this. She was too feisty, too vital to just disappear into a coma. My instincts told me to start talking to her and keep chatting away. I stayed at her bedside day and night, and that's precisely what I did. I spoke to her all the time about my husband and our two small children, about other relatives, about her own life. I told her all the news that was circulating in Australia at the time. I also kept urging her to keep clinging to life, not to give up. "Don't you dare leave us!" I exhorted. "I need you, Mom needs you, your grandchildren need you. They're just beginning to get to know you. It's too soon for you to go!"
It was hard for me to do battle for my grandmother's life, alone as I was. During the time that she fell ill, I was her only relative in Sydney. Her daughter (my mother) was away overseas on a trip, and my only sibling — a brother — lived in Israel. My husband was home caring for our children so that I could take my post at her bedside. I stood a solitary vigil, but that was not what placed such tremendous pressure on me. What was enormously difficult was being asked to make decisions alone. The emotional burden was huge.
When four days passed with no signs of life flickering in either my grandmother's eyes or her hands, and no change recorded by the EEG, the doctors advised me to authorize the papers that would turn off the life support systems. I trembled to think that I held the power of consigning my grandmother to an early grave. "But she's really already dead," the doctors argued. "She's just being kept artificially alive by the pacemaker and the respirator. Keeping her hooked up to these machines is just a waste."
"Well, listen," I said. "It's Thursday afternoon, and in the Jewish religion we bury people right away. My parents are overseas — practically two days away — and they would certainly want to be here for the funeral. But we don't do funerals on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. The earliest we could do the funeral would be on Sunday. So let me call my parents to get ready to fly home, and I'll sign the papers on Sunday." It was all very cold and calculating, but deep inside, my heart was aching.
Meanwhile, I didn't let up. I kept talking up a storm. "Guess what, Grandma?" I gossiped. "You won't believe who ended up being your roommate here in the hospital! Stringfellow! Your next door neighbor at home, Mrs. Stringfellow, was just brought in with a serious condition. Isn't that a coincidence? She lives next door to you in Sydney and now she's your roommate here in the hospital!"
On Saturday, I was at my usual post at my grandmother's bedside, getting ready to start a round of tearful goodbyes, when I thought I noticed her eyes blinking. I called a nurse and told her what I had seen. "It's just your imagination, dearie," the nurse said compassionately. "Why don't you go downstairs for some coffee, and I'll stay with her until you come back?"
But when I returned, the nurse was brimming over with excitement herself. "You know," she said, "I think you may be right. I've been sitting here watching your grandmother, and I could swear I saw her blinking, too."
A few hours later, my grandmother's eyelids flew open. She stared at me and then craned her neck to look at the empty bed on the other side of the room. "Hey," she yelled, "what happened to Stringfellow?"
By the time my mother arrived at the hospital the next day, my grandmother was sitting up in bed, conversing cheerfully with the hospital staff, and looking perfectly normal. My mother glared at me, annoyed, sure I had exaggerated my grandmother's condition. "For this, I had to schlep all the way home?" she asked.
Later, my grandmother told me that while she was in the "coma" she had heard every single word that was said to her and about her. She repeated all the conversations to me, and her retention was remarkable.
"I kept shouting to you," she said, "but somehow you didn't hear me. I kept on trying to tell you, 'Don't bury me yet.'"
After she was discharged from the hospital, my grandmother's quality of life remained excellent. She lived on her own as a self-sufficient, independent, and high-spirited lady and continued to live in this manner until her death sixteen years after I almost pulled the plug.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/68197/jewish/Coma.htm
How the world has spiraled downwards. When I read my husband the Australian miracle story above, which happened fifty years ago, he commented that today, the nurse who offered to “stay with grandma” while the granddaughter took a coffee break would likely have been the one to pull the plug in her absence.
There are many more stories of survivors of a “brain death” diagnosis on the respectforhumanlife.com site. For example:
Zack Dunlap
21 year old Oklahoman Zack Dunlap was declared “brain dead” in November 2007 after a terrible ATV accident. It was so bad that brain matter was coming out of his ear, and a blood flow scan showed no blood flow to his brain. Zack heard the doctors pronounce his 'death'. Minutes before his organ harvest was about to begin, his grandmother prayed for him to live, and his cousin urged him to pray for himself. Within minutes, Zack’s cousin proved that he had reflexes. 48 days after he was declared dead, Zack left the rehab hospital, and lives a fully recovered life. You must read Zack’s entire miraculous story here:
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna23768436
Taylor Hale
14 year old Iowa girl Taylor Hale was injured in an accident. Her parents were told that she was brain dead and that her brain had “turned to mush;” now she is alive and well:
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/local/daniel-finney/2015/05/12/waukee-faith-healing-graduation/27207307/
Steven Thorpe
21 year old Steven Thorpe was declared “brain dead” after a car accident in February 2008, after only two days in the hospital. His parents refused to accept the diagnosis, and demanded a second opinion. After four doctors confirmed the diagnosis, the family still refused to give up, and two weeks later, Steven woke up.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-17757112
Trenton McKinley
13 year old Alabama boy Trenton McKinley was diagnosed as “brain dead” in March 2018 after an accident caused severe brain trauma. His parents had signed papers for his organ donation. The day before the harvest surgery he started showing signs of life and began a long recovery.
“A man from the UAB organ donation came and talked to us in the family conference room about donating five organs to UAB children's hospital that would save five other children. But just a day before doctors were set to end Trenton's life support, he showed signs of cognition, and now he's slowly going through recovery.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trenton-mckinley-regains-consciousness-after-parents-sign-papers-to-donate-his-organs-2018-05-06/
James Howard Jones
James Howard-Jones was diagnosed “brain dead” after being attacked in April 2022. His family asked doctors to delay the organ donation for a week so James’ friends and family could say goodbye. Waiting the few extra days led to James waking up, despite his diagnosis.
•Colleen S. Burns 1969 - 2011, was diagnosed "brain dead" after an attempted overdose in 2009. She awoke on the operating table minutes before her organs were to be harvested. Sadly, she passed away in 2011 of depression.
I remember my disbelief and sadness in 2005 as brain-injured Terry Schiavo was starved and dehydrated to death by her estranged husband - under a court order permitting him to do so.
And today? That same horrific murder by starvation and dehydration is now an everyday story, “brain dead” or not.
Terry Schiavo’s brother now campaigns for the right of brain-injured people to food and water, and has an organization to assist families facing brain-injury crisis. See
https://terrischiavo.org/terri-schiavo-life-hope-network/ and
https://www.lifeandhope.com/.
What should family members do if faced with the unthinkable diagnosis of “brain death,” G-d forbid?
Prayer to the One and only Creator of the world is the most effective avenue of all.
Insist that your religious beliefs do not allow for discontinuation of life support.
Keep fighting them off to give your loved one time to recover. Do not leave the patient alone, and watch the patient vigilantly, as medical personnel may take matters into their own hands.
Treatments which have helped “brain dead” patients recover include:
•hyperbaric oxygen therapy
•ozone therapy
•craniosacral visceral manipulations
•lymphatic drainage therapy
•transcranial low-level laser therapy (LLLT) or photobiomodulation (PBM) therapy
•high doses of Omega 3 fatty acids, found in fish oil.
From Unbekoming’s interview of Lourdes Lavoy, whose “brain dead” daughter is well today:
When our daughter was hospitalized with a severe brain injury (brain dead), we were informed that the hospital would keep her alive until we could arrive and say our goodbyes. The hospital was unaware that I am Option C. I conducted my own research and discovered that high doses of omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil could potentially reverse severe brain damage. When we arrived at the hospital, it was not to say goodbye to our daughter, but to instruct the medical staff on how we were going to save her. Chris was respectful and considerate in his approach, but when I noticed that we were not deviating from the hospital's predetermined course of action, I intervened and was less than polite. This is a critical aspect of Option C that people must understand. Option C acknowledges the reality that the hospital does not have complete control over the measures taken to restore a patient's health. My daughter got a high dose of fish oil, as I demanded, and she is alive and well today. The hospital and its doctors cannot compel a patient to receive a particular treatment or dictate how they should proceed with their recovery.
You can email Lourdes at
[email protected].
https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/interview-with-lourdes-and-chris
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https://ko-fi.com/truth613 https://substack.com/home/post/p-146415265“Brain Dead” is NOT Dead! LIVE people are murdered daily for organs and to “save money”
You MUST KNOW that “no brain activity” means NOTHING except that doctors didn’t do the tests that would find the brain activity. Don’t let your loved one be killed.
Brucha Weisberger
BS”D
From the beginning of time, people knew that cessation of heartbeat and breath meant death. This is the G-d-given definition, and it is logical. Since it’s real, this definition does not require anything to “prop it up.”
Of course, G-d, Who creates life, is the only One Who has the authority to say when it ends, and to end it. Unfortunately, two motivations came into play in the 20th century to create a new, and false, “definition” of death.
Marina Zhang at Epoch Times explains in her June 2024 article, “Brain-Dead People May Not Be Dead—Here’s Why.” https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/are-brain-dead-people-really-dead-5629496
The definition of brain death, also known as death by neurological criteria, is when a person falls into a permanent coma, loses their brainstem reflexes and consciousness, and can’t breathe without stimulus or support.
Yet a person’s heart can be beating, his or her organs functional, and he or she can fight off infection, grow, and even carry babies to term. (Delivery of a Healthy Baby from a Brain-Dead Woman After 117 Days of Somatic Support: A Case Report - PMC https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8141338/)
Though they may exhibit no signs of consciousness, some areas of the brain may still work. About 50 percent of brain-death patients retain activity in their hypothalamus, which coordinates the body’s endocrine system and regulates body temperature.
However, all of this stops if they are taken off life support.
What is the big rush to declare death and take people off of breathing assistance?
First, there is a need for transplant organs, and second, a wish to “save resources” by having people hurry up and die already.
From Rachel Aviv’s article in the New Yorker, 2018: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/what-does-it-mean-to-die
Until the nineteen-sixties, cardio-respiratory failure was the only way to die. The notion that death could be diagnosed in the brain didn’t emerge until after the advent of the modern ventilator, allowing what was known at the time as “oxygen treatment”: as long as blood carrying oxygen reached the heart, it could continue to beat. In 1967, Henry Beecher, a renowned bioethicist at Harvard Medical School, wrote to a colleague, “It would be most desirable for a group at Harvard University to come to some subtle conclusion as to a new definition of death.” Permanently comatose patients, maintained by mechanical ventilators, were “increasing in numbers over the land and there are a number of problems which should be faced up to.”
Beecher created a committee comprising men who already knew one another: ten doctors, one lawyer, one historian, and one theologian. In less than six months, they completed a report, which they published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The only citation in the article was from a speech by the Pope. They proposed that the irreversible destruction of the brain should be defined as death, giving two reasons: to relieve the burden on families and hospitals, which were providing futile care to patients who would never recover, and to address the fact that “obsolete criteria for the definition of death can lead to controversy in obtaining organs for transplantation,” a field that had developed rapidly; in the previous five years, doctors had performed the world’s first transplant of a pancreas, a liver, a lung, and a heart. In an earlier draft, the second reason was stated more directly: “There is great need for the tissues and organs of the hopelessly comatose in order to restore to health those who are still salvageable.” (The sentence was revised after Harvard’s medical dean wrote that “the connotation of this statement is unfortunate.”)
In the next twelve years, twenty-seven states rewrote their definitions of death to conform to the Harvard committee’s conclusions. Thousands of lives were prolonged or saved every year because patients declared brain-dead—a form of death eventually adopted by the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and most of Europe—were now eligible to donate their organs. The philosopher Peter Singer described it as “a concept so desirable in its consequences that it is unthinkable to give up, and so shaky on its foundations that it can scarcely be supported.” The new death was “an ethical choice masquerading as a medical fact,” he wrote.
Legal ambiguities remained—people considered alive in one region of the country could be declared dead in another—and, in 1981, the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems proposed a uniform definition and theory of death. Its report, which was endorsed by the American Medical Association, stated that death is the moment when the body stops operating as an “integrated whole.” Even if life continues in individual organs and cells, the person is no longer alive, because the functioning organs are merely a collection of artificially maintained subsystems that will inevitably disintegrate. “The heart usually stops beating within two to ten days,” the report said.
The commission’s staff philosopher, Daniel Wikler, a professor at Harvard and the first staff ethicist for the World Health Organization, told me that he didn’t think the commission’s theory of death was supported by the scientific facts it cited. “I thought it was demonstrably untrue, but so what?” he said. “I didn’t see a downside at the time.” Wikler told the commission that it would be more logical to say that death occurred when the cerebrum—the center for consciousness, thoughts, and feelings, the properties essential to having a personal identity—was destroyed. His formulation would have rendered a much broader population of patients, including those who could breathe on their own, dead.
Despite Wikler’s reservations, he drafted the third chapter of the report, “Understanding the ‘Meaning’ of Death.” “I was put in a tight spot, and I fudged,” he told me. “I knew that there was an air of bad faith about it. I made it seem like there are a lot of profound unknowns and went in the direction of fuzziness, so that no one could say, ‘Hey, your philosopher says this is nonsense.’ That’s what I thought, but you’d never know from what I wrote.”
So much for “brain dead” being a scientific definition.
It is truly horrifying to contemplate that living, feeling people have their vital organs barbarically cut out while they are alive. Organs must be “harvested” from live donors in order to be viable. Live, in the true sense of the word - the heart is beating. (As you will see in this article, there is awareness, as well, even if the person cannot express it.)
From Marina Zhang’s ET article:
Among European anesthesiologists, there is an ongoing debate about whether brain-dead organ donors should be given consciousness blockers during organ procurement.
Some argue that they should do so in case patients feel pain. Others disagree. Surprisingly, the anesthesiologists’ position is “not based on the claim that patients were incapable of experiencing pain,” but, instead, out of concern that the public might have doubts about the brain-death diagnosis, bioethicists Dr. Robert Truog and Franklin Miller (who has a doctorate in philosophy) wrote in their book, “Death, Dying, and Organ Transplantation.”
Dr. Ronald Dworkin, a research fellow and anesthesiologist, wrote in an article on organ procurement that he chose to give consciousness blockers because he thought his patient “might still be a ‘little alive’, [sic] whatever that means.”
Mr. Miller, who is also a professor of medical ethics in medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, said the label of brain death is misleading. He and Dr. Truog, professor of anesthesiology and director emeritus of the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics, are of the opinion that brain-dead people are alive but likely will not regain consciousness and recover.
See this chilling account by a doctor, in the ET article:
It was 1989, and she was still a resident anesthesiologist, Dr. Heidi Klessig recalled in her book, “The Brain Death Fallacy.”
One day, her attending anesthesiologist told her to prepare a brain-dead organ donor for organ removal surgery.
Upon examining the patient, Dr. Klessig was surprised to find that the man looked exactly like every other critically ill, living patient and, in fact, better than most.
“He was warm, his heart was beating, and his monitors showed stable vital signs,” Dr. Klessig wrote. “Nevertheless, on his bedside exam, he checked all the boxes for brain death, and the neurologist declared him ‘dead.’”
Dr. Klessig’s supervising attending anesthesiologist asked her what anesthesia she was going to give the donor for the operation.
Her answer was a paralyzing agent so the donor wouldn’t move during surgery, as well as some fentanyl to blunt the body’s responses to pain.
The anesthesiologist looked at her and asked, “Well, are you going to give anything to block consciousness?”
Dr. Klessig was stunned. Consciousness blockers are given to patients to ensure they aren’t awake and aware during an operation.
Her education told her that brain-dead patients should not be conscious; apart from having a biologically active body, their minds were gone.
“I looked at him and said, ‘Why would I do that? Isn’t he dead?’”
Her attending anesthesiologist looked at her and asked, “Why don’t you give him something to block consciousness—just in case.”
“I get a pit in my stomach every time I remember his face,” Dr. Klessig told The Epoch Times. “I remember him looking at me over his mask ... It seemed very confusing.
Please don’t miss the extremely powerful video testimony above.
It is horrific to realize that parents and other family members are routinely told that their child or loved one is “dead” because of absence of “brain activity” when in reality, the person is alive, and will die only when the family agrees to to having the respirator unplugged - in order words, to have their relative murdered.
Someone that I know personally told me of an immensely tragic case that he was was involved with, in which a brain-injured child whom he was helping to heal after she had been declared “brain dead,” was murdered after he was removed from the premises. The child had been making progress towards recovery. He knows of many other similar cases. In one case, the child’s father witnessed with his own eyes the nurse giving the child an injection, after which the child’s heart stopped - but the nurse denied administering anything.
This person that I know told me of a doctor in Louisiana, Dr. Paul Harch, who has helped scores of “brain dead” children and adults to become completely well again - using a walk-in hyperbaric oxygen chamber which accommodates people on life support.
Dr. Harch uses a special test that can pick up brain activity not picked up on standard brain tests - but hospitals refuse to use it.
Why do the powers-that-be want people dead, so badly?
Here are some stories which clearly illustrate how very much alive people who are pronounced “brain dead” actually are. Most of them were collected on this website: https://www.respectforhumanlife.com/survivors
Harrison Elmer: Three week old boy with meningitis had life support machine turned off - but staged a miracle recovery
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/three-week-old-boy-meningitis-6733061
Harrison had become desperately ill after being struck down by meningitis and doctors said they could do no more.
Scans showed he was completely brain dead.
Heartbroken Samantha Baker, 22, and Adam Ellmer, 26, chose to take Harrison to a hospice so he could pass away peacefully by their side.
But after the machine was turned off, little Harrison not only managed to breathe on his own, he began an incredible journey back to health.
Now he is about to reach his third birthday, and is hitting all the milestones as expected.
Samantha, a full-time mum, said: “When Harrison's life support was switched off we never imagined he would continue to breathe.
“We were all so heartbroken when we were told he wasn't going to survive, it felt like a real miracle.
“Despite surviving, doctors still warned us that he would never be able to walk or talk.
“We were terrified but so thankful he had survived that we just took each day as it came.”
Jahi Mcmath 2000 - 2018 Declared "Brain Dead" in the state of California in December 2013. She lived five more years in New Jersey post diagnosis
Jahi’s case is particularly tragic because it didn’t have to happen - she had surgery to remove her tonsils, because of sleep apnea which caused her exhaustion and difficulty focusing. Her post-op observation was grossly lacking, and her unusual bleeding was ignored. Jahi hemorrhaged and lost her pulse. Doctors declared her “brain dead,” but her mother never gave up. She fought and fought against the furious medical “professionals:”
On December 19th, ten days after the surgery, David Durand, the hospital’s senior vice-president and chief medical officer, held a meeting with the family. They asked Durand to allow Jahi to remain on the ventilator [for six more days], suggesting that the swelling in her brain might subside. Durand said no. They also asked that she be given a feeding tube. Durand dismissed this request, too. The idea that the procedure would help her recover was an “absurd notion,” he later wrote, and would only add to the “illusion that she is not dead.”
When they persisted, Durand asked, “What is it that you don’t understand?” According to Jahi’s mother, stepfather, grandmother, brother, and Dolan, who took notes, Durand pounded his fist on the table, saying, “She’s dead, dead, dead.”
Jahi’s mother wouldn’t give up, and moved Jahi to another state. Her family constantly spoke with her and stimulated her. Despite having a death certificate, Jahi was clearly alive. She would move her hands and feet in response to requests, and even began menstruating (a process mediated by the hypothalamus, near the front of the brain.)
On the (MRI) scans, Machado observed that Jahi’s brain stem was nearly destroyed. The nerve fibres that connect the brain’s right and left hemispheres were barely recognizable. But large areas of her cerebrum, which mediates consciousness, language, and voluntary movements, were structurally intact.
Unfortunately, Jahi passed away of liver failure after five years of devoted care and of progress.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/what-does-it-mean-to-die
On Thursday, a senior doctor told the High Court she was "shocked" when a baby declared brain stem dead after two tests began breathing by himself two weeks later.
The court heard that ventilation continued on the four-month-old after he was declared dead because there was an ongoing legal dispute.
In July, doctors treating him at a London hospital were forced to rescind "the clinical ascertainment of death" after a nurse noticed the infant had independent rhythmic breathing.
Mr Justice Hayden, who has been asked by Guys' and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust to decide what is in the baby's best interests, said the juxtaposition of a baby being declared dead but then breathing independently is "striking even for those of us experienced in these cases". He called the test "unreliable".
The doctor said the "wording" of the test could be changed to include a warning about the test's reliability.
She said she had approached the AMRC to explain what happened, saying it would be "problematic" if news of the test's unreliability "got out in the public domain".
The brain stem test is a clinical test done when there is clear evidence of serious brain damage that cannot be cured. It is a series of mini tests to check the brain's automatic functions including reaction to light in the eyes, ice-cold water in the ear and a short period off a ventilator to see whether a patient attempts to take a breath.
Lewis Roberts
In March 2021, 18-year-old Lewis Roberts was declared brain stem dead after a road accident but began breathing independently hours before his organs were to be extracted for donation. Today he is well enough to play football and basketball.
Last month his sister told Sky News the test is done too soon.
"They rushed it through," she said.
"Eight months ago he was sat in a wheelchair, his eyes were gone, he couldn't speak. From how he was then to how he is now, that just shows that the brain can heal given the time."
https://news.sky.com/story/brain-death-test-in-uk-under-review-after-baby-declared-dead-began-breathing-independently-12681630
It’s not only young people who can have miraculous recoveries. Here, a woman in her seventies who had a severe heart attack made a comeback after 6 days of a flat EEG.
This story by Judy Doobov, from the book Small Miracles for the Jewish Heart, was republished on Chabad.org.
After sustaining a severe heart attack in 1973, my grandmother sank into a deep coma and was placed on life support systems in the hospital. Her EEG was totally flat, indicating zero brain activity. She was hooked up both to a pacemaker that made her heart beat artificially and a respirator that made her lungs breathe artificially. But technically, as the doctors told me privately, she was basically as good as dead. "She'll never come out of the coma," they said, "and she's better off this way. If she did, her life would be meaningless. She'd exist in a purely vegetative state.
Even though she was in her mid-seventies and had lived a full life, I refused to believe that my beloved grandmother could simply slip away like this. She was too feisty, too vital to just disappear into a coma. My instincts told me to start talking to her and keep chatting away. I stayed at her bedside day and night, and that's precisely what I did. I spoke to her all the time about my husband and our two small children, about other relatives, about her own life. I told her all the news that was circulating in Australia at the time. I also kept urging her to keep clinging to life, not to give up. "Don't you dare leave us!" I exhorted. "I need you, Mom needs you, your grandchildren need you. They're just beginning to get to know you. It's too soon for you to go!"
It was hard for me to do battle for my grandmother's life, alone as I was. During the time that she fell ill, I was her only relative in Sydney. Her daughter (my mother) was away overseas on a trip, and my only sibling — a brother — lived in Israel. My husband was home caring for our children so that I could take my post at her bedside. I stood a solitary vigil, but that was not what placed such tremendous pressure on me. What was enormously difficult was being asked to make decisions alone. The emotional burden was huge.
When four days passed with no signs of life flickering in either my grandmother's eyes or her hands, and no change recorded by the EEG, the doctors advised me to authorize the papers that would turn off the life support systems. I trembled to think that I held the power of consigning my grandmother to an early grave. "But she's really already dead," the doctors argued. "She's just being kept artificially alive by the pacemaker and the respirator. Keeping her hooked up to these machines is just a waste."
"Well, listen," I said. "It's Thursday afternoon, and in the Jewish religion we bury people right away. My parents are overseas — practically two days away — and they would certainly want to be here for the funeral. But we don't do funerals on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. The earliest we could do the funeral would be on Sunday. So let me call my parents to get ready to fly home, and I'll sign the papers on Sunday." It was all very cold and calculating, but deep inside, my heart was aching.
Meanwhile, I didn't let up. I kept talking up a storm. "Guess what, Grandma?" I gossiped. "You won't believe who ended up being your roommate here in the hospital! Stringfellow! Your next door neighbor at home, Mrs. Stringfellow, was just brought in with a serious condition. Isn't that a coincidence? She lives next door to you in Sydney and now she's your roommate here in the hospital!"
On Saturday, I was at my usual post at my grandmother's bedside, getting ready to start a round of tearful goodbyes, when I thought I noticed her eyes blinking. I called a nurse and told her what I had seen. "It's just your imagination, dearie," the nurse said compassionately. "Why don't you go downstairs for some coffee, and I'll stay with her until you come back?"
But when I returned, the nurse was brimming over with excitement herself. "You know," she said, "I think you may be right. I've been sitting here watching your grandmother, and I could swear I saw her blinking, too."
A few hours later, my grandmother's eyelids flew open. She stared at me and then craned her neck to look at the empty bed on the other side of the room. "Hey," she yelled, "what happened to Stringfellow?"
By the time my mother arrived at the hospital the next day, my grandmother was sitting up in bed, conversing cheerfully with the hospital staff, and looking perfectly normal. My mother glared at me, annoyed, sure I had exaggerated my grandmother's condition. "For this, I had to schlep all the way home?" she asked.
Later, my grandmother told me that while she was in the "coma" she had heard every single word that was said to her and about her. She repeated all the conversations to me, and her retention was remarkable.
"I kept shouting to you," she said, "but somehow you didn't hear me. I kept on trying to tell you, 'Don't bury me yet.'"
After she was discharged from the hospital, my grandmother's quality of life remained excellent. She lived on her own as a self-sufficient, independent, and high-spirited lady and continued to live in this manner until her death sixteen years after I almost pulled the plug.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/68197/jewish/Coma.htm
How the world has spiraled downwards. When I read my husband the Australian miracle story above, which happened fifty years ago, he commented that today, the nurse who offered to “stay with grandma” while the granddaughter took a coffee break would likely have been the one to pull the plug in her absence.
There are many more stories of survivors of a “brain death” diagnosis on the respectforhumanlife.com site. For example:
Zack Dunlap
21 year old Oklahoman Zack Dunlap was declared “brain dead” in November 2007 after a terrible ATV accident. It was so bad that brain matter was coming out of his ear, and a blood flow scan showed no blood flow to his brain. Zack heard the doctors pronounce his 'death'. Minutes before his organ harvest was about to begin, his grandmother prayed for him to live, and his cousin urged him to pray for himself. Within minutes, Zack’s cousin proved that he had reflexes. 48 days after he was declared dead, Zack left the rehab hospital, and lives a fully recovered life. You must read Zack’s entire miraculous story here: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna23768436
Taylor Hale
14 year old Iowa girl Taylor Hale was injured in an accident. Her parents were told that she was brain dead and that her brain had “turned to mush;” now she is alive and well: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/local/daniel-finney/2015/05/12/waukee-faith-healing-graduation/27207307/
Steven Thorpe
21 year old Steven Thorpe was declared “brain dead” after a car accident in February 2008, after only two days in the hospital. His parents refused to accept the diagnosis, and demanded a second opinion. After four doctors confirmed the diagnosis, the family still refused to give up, and two weeks later, Steven woke up. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-17757112
Trenton McKinley
13 year old Alabama boy Trenton McKinley was diagnosed as “brain dead” in March 2018 after an accident caused severe brain trauma. His parents had signed papers for his organ donation. The day before the harvest surgery he started showing signs of life and began a long recovery.
“A man from the UAB organ donation came and talked to us in the family conference room about donating five organs to UAB children's hospital that would save five other children. But just a day before doctors were set to end Trenton's life support, he showed signs of cognition, and now he's slowly going through recovery.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trenton-mckinley-regains-consciousness-after-parents-sign-papers-to-donate-his-organs-2018-05-06/
James Howard Jones
James Howard-Jones was diagnosed “brain dead” after being attacked in April 2022. His family asked doctors to delay the organ donation for a week so James’ friends and family could say goodbye. Waiting the few extra days led to James waking up, despite his diagnosis.
•Colleen S. Burns 1969 - 2011, was diagnosed "brain dead" after an attempted overdose in 2009. She awoke on the operating table minutes before her organs were to be harvested. Sadly, she passed away in 2011 of depression.
I remember my disbelief and sadness in 2005 as brain-injured Terry Schiavo was starved and dehydrated to death by her estranged husband - under a court order permitting him to do so.
And today? That same horrific murder by starvation and dehydration is now an everyday story, “brain dead” or not.
Terry Schiavo’s brother now campaigns for the right of brain-injured people to food and water, and has an organization to assist families facing brain-injury crisis. See https://terrischiavo.org/terri-schiavo-life-hope-network/ and https://www.lifeandhope.com/.
What should family members do if faced with the unthinkable diagnosis of “brain death,” G-d forbid?
Prayer to the One and only Creator of the world is the most effective avenue of all.
Insist that your religious beliefs do not allow for discontinuation of life support.
Keep fighting them off to give your loved one time to recover. Do not leave the patient alone, and watch the patient vigilantly, as medical personnel may take matters into their own hands.
Treatments which have helped “brain dead” patients recover include:
•hyperbaric oxygen therapy
•ozone therapy
•craniosacral visceral manipulations
•lymphatic drainage therapy
•transcranial low-level laser therapy (LLLT) or photobiomodulation (PBM) therapy
•high doses of Omega 3 fatty acids, found in fish oil.
From Unbekoming’s interview of Lourdes Lavoy, whose “brain dead” daughter is well today:
When our daughter was hospitalized with a severe brain injury (brain dead), we were informed that the hospital would keep her alive until we could arrive and say our goodbyes. The hospital was unaware that I am Option C. I conducted my own research and discovered that high doses of omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil could potentially reverse severe brain damage. When we arrived at the hospital, it was not to say goodbye to our daughter, but to instruct the medical staff on how we were going to save her. Chris was respectful and considerate in his approach, but when I noticed that we were not deviating from the hospital's predetermined course of action, I intervened and was less than polite. This is a critical aspect of Option C that people must understand. Option C acknowledges the reality that the hospital does not have complete control over the measures taken to restore a patient's health. My daughter got a high dose of fish oil, as I demanded, and she is alive and well today. The hospital and its doctors cannot compel a patient to receive a particular treatment or dictate how they should proceed with their recovery.
You can email Lourdes at
[email protected]. https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/interview-with-lourdes-and-chris
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