Question One
Over the years, physicians have used traditional methods of confirming a person’s death through various means. A person would be confirmed dead when they lacked a heartbeat, pulse, and respiration. Doctors also pronounced dead people who failed to respond to stimuli, in addition to lack of breathing. The lack of technology caused various ethical problems when victims of circumstances search as lightning, strokes, and seizures were misdiagnosed to be dead (Kastenbaum, 2015). Hence, physicians devised a scientific means of appropriately determining a person’s death, known as the Harvard Criteria. However, ethical issues still abound concerning this scientific view of death.
The new scientific criteria defined a dead person as one who is unreceptive and unresponsive to stimuli such as pain and light. Additionally, the Harvard criterion contends that a deceased person is devoid of external and respiratory movements. Consequently, such a person fails to respond to an electroencephalogram (EEG) stimuli because their brain is considered permanently damaged (Kastenbaum, 2015). Hence, a person who experiences irreversible harm on the brain is technically dead, and attempts to treat such a vegetative person by maintaining them on life support is a waste of time and resources.
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Several ethical issues surround the scientific approach of a person who suffers brain damage and is consequently described as a deceased individual, despite being on life support mechanisms. For instance, it is unethical to contend that such a person is lifeless when they have a fetus that is dependent on their survival (Kastenbaum, 2015). It is also wrong to decide that such a person would be a source of organ donation, yet they have a beating heart and flowing blood.
The decision to end a patient’s life by intentionally separating them from life support is technically murder. Besides, residual brain activity can continue even when parts of the brain are injured. There also exists a possibility of maintaining coordinated activity even when the mind is dead. Hence, the scientific approach towards a person who suffers permanent brain damage as being dead is highly unethical, and other means should be used to rule out a patient’s survival chances.
Question Two
The human reaction to death is an exciting study basis for researchers and counselors. While people exhibit differential emotions when their loved ones or acquaintances are deceased, denial and anxiety have proved to be more intense in them. In The Death of Ivan Illych , Leo Tosyo uses Peter Ivanovich’s reaction to his best friend’s death as an epitome of the ideas of death anxiety and death denial explained by Robert Kastenbaum in his book, Death, Society and Human Experience.
The author provides a detailed description of Peter’s attitude towards the death of his best friend after viewing his body. First, Peter is horrified at the thought of the suffering that his companion underwent before his demise (Kastenbaum, 2015). These feelings intensify when he reflects on the fact that he is also mortal, and could potentially succumb to the same dying conditions as his acquaintance. After his reflection, Peter decides that his friend only died because he was luckless, unlike him. He further opines that he would not pass on from the circumstances that caused his friend’s death because he is not as prone to accidents as his bosom ally was. Peter employs this death anxiety evasive methods as a means of rejecting the reality attached to the death of a close acquaintance.
In truth, Peter’s reaction is similar to people’s response to death in today’s society. Kastenbaum (2015) opines that death anxiety, characterized by a sense of loss and depression, is a typical neurophysiological response by death survivors. First, the author expounds on the differential factors that spike death anxiety in bereaved individuals. He employs self-reported reports to ascertain that first, the level of death anxiety increases with age (Kastenbaum, 2015). Young adults have higher levels of death anxiety because they fear to die before achieving their goals. This fear heightens when a loved one dies because it reminds them that they are susceptible to death too. Additionally, the fear of relationship loss, financial distress, and future uncertainties increase the levels of death anxiety in human beings. Concerning Peter Ivanovich, these factors may have played a role in his concern associated with his friend’s death.
Kastenbaum (2015) further contends that death survivors tend to exhibit denial symptoms such as selective response, compartmentalization, and resistance in an attempt to comfort themselves. According to the author, Sigmund Freud explains denial as having Thanatobia, a condition where a person denies a real tragedy because they fear to lose the love, value, and security attached to being a whole person. Kastenbaum (2015) also employs the edge theory to explain the denial. He ascertains that bereaved people believe that they possess the cognitive and social skills to detect death through their bio-mechanisms; hence they cannot be victims of an unplanned death.
Additionally, the author explains that death survivors employ the existential challenge in their denial process. They apply the terror management theory, which states that people control their anxieties by socially sanctioned evasions, which is advanced by society’s false illusion of continuity. These theories perfectly explain Peter’s further denial towards the death of his friend, his belief that he would not die in identical circumstances as his friend.
References
Kastenbaum. (2015). Death, Society and Human Experience (1-download). NewYork: Routledge.
