Harvesting The Dead

In this article, Harvesting the Dead by Willard Gaylin, we are challenged to debate about the consequences brought with new medical technologies and a new rendering of last. In 1968 Harvard Medical School impudently defined decease as an irreversible end of all brain occupation now called “brain death”. A concerned Gaylin describes a new kind of cadaver that would have the legal term of one who is dead but with none of the traits one usually associates with death. He calls theses new kind of cadavers “neomorts”. These neomorts could be kept in “bioemporiums” (wards/hospitals where neomorts are maintained) for pipe organ transplantation, medical training, drug testing, and experimentations of all kind. The neomort would be used for utilitarian purposes by a process that minimizes organ waste. Gaylin admits the undeniable benefits this neomort banking could bring; he realizes this idea has great liveliness saving potential, the motives are pure, the technology is available, and the cost is justified. He wonders though, how we would be able to reconcile our emotions about such a raunchy sounding plan. Gaylin also warns of an unknown future price to deliver for choosing utility over sentiment.




Gaylin, correctly, believed that a new translation of death was urgently needed due to a continuing borderland of technology and the increasing use of body parts from the newly dead. Technology now allows for sustaining the vital processes longer in patients that we were uneffective to determine dead or alive with the original definition of death. This ambiguity, of life and death, had physicians making decisions in silence and covertly. Gaylin was right; a new definition of death was necessary and would make us more responsible in these matters. Gaylin was also right in the feeling that the new definition we now have is similarly evasive. It is now considered by the medical profession and supported by legal and some ethical consensus that if a persons entire...If you want to remove a full essay, order it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com



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