Stiff: The Curious Life Of Human Cadavers is a 2003 nonfiction work by Mary Roach. In chapter 8, "How to Know If You’re Dead," Roach looks at beating-heart cadavers, live burial, and a search for the soul. The chapter analyzes the differences between a healthy human being and a body surviving only through a machine.
Roach visits beating-heart cadavers at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center who are being kept alive for organ donation. In particular, she follows a lady, known as "H," who is braindead but is on artificial life support. Roach comments that
H doesn’t look or smell or feel dead.
She observes when a surgeon cuts H open while H's organs are still functioning and notes that she struggles with the idea that H is now a cadaver and no longer a living being:
It is strange, almost impossible, really, to think of her as a corpse.
Roach thinks about what makes somebody truly dead. When does the soul leave the body? And also, where in the body is the soul when a person is alive?
The chapter ends with Roach’s personal opinion on organ donation:
It is astounding to me, and achingly sad, that with eighty thousand people on the waiting list for donated hearts and livers and kidneys, with sixteen a day dying there on that list, that more than half of the people in the position H's family was in will say no, will choose to burn those organs or let them rot. We abide by the surgeon's scalpel to save our own lives, our loved ones' lives, but not to save a stranger's life. H has no heart, but heartless is the last thing you'd call her.
When is an individual truly dead? In the eighth chapter of Stiff, Roach tackles the debate over the definition of death and continues her reflections on the existence and seat of the human soul.
To understand why the debate over when death actually occurs is important, one must understand the two types of death defined by the medical community: clinical and biological. Clinical death, defined by the absence of heartbeat, breathing, and brain function is sometimes reversible, while biological death, which occurs at the cellular level up to two hours after clinical death, is not reversible. A blurring of these definitions occurs in the case of individuals who are organ donors, however. Though technically considered “dead,” unable to sustain heart and lung function on their own, the vital organs in these beating heart cadavers are preserved for transplantation via artificial (mechanical) respiration and circulation. Therefore, if a human being is being maintained in such a manner, are they truly a cadaver?
Using one such beating-heart female cadaver, “H,” as an example, Roach witnesses the harvesting of her organs at UCSF Medical Center. While she supports organ donation, believing the practice both humane and necessary, she also struggles with the idea that H, who has been maintained on artificial life support, is no longer a living person. This, in turn, causes Roach to meditate upon the existence of the soul. Ultimately, however, she believes people like H are “the dead’s heroes.” Thanks to H’s gift, for example, the lives of three people will be saved.
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