Re: Who's Really Behind Promotion of The Da Vinci Code?


Francis A. Miniter wrote:

The definitions cited by Jane take a conservative position as to brain death,
requiring death of the brain stem to occur. The problem is that with a dead
cerebrum, but functioning midbrain and brain stem, what is there left that makes
a person human?

The fact that she is physically a human being and physically alive.

Precisely what I object to is this attempt to define "human" as
something "more" than that.

It's not our "personality" that makes us human. It's not our self
awareness, or our thought processes. We're human because we're
physically human and physically alive.



Bringing this back to mystery-related issues, I pose the case where a person in
Terri Schiavo's situation is the victim of an assault by a known perpetrator.
What is the charge that should be brought? Is it a mere assault? Send the
person away for a maximum 5 years with 2 years off for good behavior and another
year off for prison overcrowding? Can the perpetrator be charged with murder in
that the cerebrum, by far the largest part of the brain and the center of all
cognitive activity, self-awareness and personality, is dead? "Your honor, Terri
Schiavo is no more. A breathing body lies in a hospital bed, but the cerebrum
is dead. Nevermore will a person named Terri Schiavo do anything in this world.
The defendant has terminated forever that possibility. He has succeeded,
perhaps beyond his hopes, in killing her." And in reply, "Your honor, we admit
that Terri Schiavo will never regain consciousness. But she breathes on her
own. She accepts food and digests it. She pumps her blood around her body.
She is far from dead as the formal definition of brain death sets death. She is
very much alive, and she may live for 60 years. And in fact, your honor, under
an old common law principle if she lives for a year and a day after my client
assaulted her, you can never charge him with her murder. So, your honor, my
client is willing to plead to assault. But this case ends there." What should
the judge rule?

Don't I remember something about aggravated assault?

I would say definitely not murder--she is not dead. But you can
go away for a good long time, including life, for severely and
permanently injuring somebody. And add attempted murder to that. I
think we could lock him up without doing the extreme wrong of somehow
finding a live, human person "not really" alive and "not really" human.

Jane Haddam
http://www.janehaddam.com

.

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