QUIESCENT
Adjective
Pronunciation:  kwee -es’-ant
Etymology:  Latin quiescent-,quiescens, present participle of quiescere to become quiet, rest,
from quies
Date:  1605
Meaning:  1.  marked by inactivity or repose, tranquilly at rest
2.   causing no trouble or symptoms <quiescent gallstones>

Last month, writing in the January issue of National Review, Wesley J. Smith, published an article entitled “Technological Morality; The Top Ten bioethics stories of the decade.”  Following the long standing custom of listing the ten most important stories of the previous decade, Smith listed in reverse order the ten top stories in bioethics.  Here is his list:

[10]  The ascendance of anti-human environmentalism
[09]  The growth of biological colonialism:  trafficking in human organs, etc.
[08]  The increase in American pro-life attitudes
[07]   The struggle over Obamacare
[06]   Legalization of assisted suicide in Washington
[05]   The success of adult stem-cell research
[04]   “Suicide Tourism” in Switzerland
[03]    In Vitro Fertilization anarchy
[02]    The Bush embryonic stem-cell funding policy
[01]    The dehydration of Terri Schiavo

While others might disagree about the ranking of those ten stories, and some might even delete and substitute other stories, I suspect that there is general agreement that the judicial murder of Terri Schiavo deserves to be ranked No. 1 because it was the most publicized debate over “brain death” and that judicial murder, having been legitimized in the main stream media, has solidified popular acceptance of ‘brain death’ as being real death.

For my own part I would list Smith’s No. 9, “The growth of biological colonialism exemplified by trafficking in human organs,” as No. 2 since the expansion of the industry of harvesting and transplanting organs grew so rapidly with the popular acceptance of ‘brain death‘ as real death.

The day after Wesley J. Smith’s article on “Technological Morality,”  Alex Tabarrok, a professor of economics at George Mason University and director of research for the Independent Institute, wrote the cover story for a section of the WEEKEND JOURNAL published by the Wall Street Journal.    In his article, entitled “The Meat Market,” Tabarrok described the harvesting of human organs for sale.

At the start of his article Tabarrok wrote, “Right now, Singapore is preparing to pay donors as much as $50,000 for their organs.  Iran has eliminated waiting lists for kidneys entirely by paying its citizens to donate.  Israel is implementing a “no give, no take‘ system that puts people who opt out of the donor system at the bottom of the transplant waiting list should they ever need an organ.”

After describing the numbers of transplants that have taken place in the United States in the last two years, Tabarrok writes:

“To combat yet another shortfall, some American doctors are routinely removing pieces of tissue from deceased patients for transplant without their, or their families’, prior consent.  And the practice is perfectly legal.  In a number of U.S. states, medical examiners conducting autopsies may and do harvest corneas with little or no family notification.  ….  Few people know about routine removal statutes and perhaps because of this, these laws have effectively increased cornea transplants.”

“Routine removal is perhaps the most extreme response to the devastating shortage of organs world-wide.  That shortage is leading some countries to try unusual new methods to increase donation.  Innovation has occurred in the United States as well, but progress has been slow and not without cost and controversy.

“Organs can be taken from deceased donors only after they have been declared dead, but where is the line between life and death?”

Tabarrok’s question is precisely what everyone should be asking today.  And the answer to that question must be arrived at soon by everyone who is concerned with the moral fibre of our society.

“The world-wide shortage of organs is going to get worse before it gets better, but we have options.  Presumed consent, financial compensation for living and deceased donors and point systems would all increase the supply of transplant organs.  Too many people have died already but pressure is mounting for innovation that will save lives.”

To which observation I would add that the specter of even worse immoral innovation confronts us.

We are guided by the statement of Pope John Paul II that “The killing of innocent human creatures, even if carried out to help others, constitutes a absolutely unacceptable act.”  (Evangelium Vitae: 63.2, 1995)

What should be of great concern is that the “pressure (is) mounting for innovation” that Tabarrok describes might well not be technological  or scientific innovation but rather philosophical sophistry.

Speaking to the 2008 meeting of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Dr. Alan Shewmon said: “Western society seems to be rapidly approaching a stage where the moment of death will be determined not so much by objective bodily changes as by the philosophy of personhood of those in charge.”

Perhaps then, it is precisely on the philosophical battlefield of defining personhood of every man, woman and child that we will make progress in our struggle to overcome the present trend of society to dehumanize everyone.

History tells us that philosophy and language have changed ways of thinking and societal sensibilities; these changes in thinking and societal sensibilities then changed laws, for better or worse.  If there is truth in that observation, then it is very likely that our battle must be fought on the battlefields of philosophy and language.  Once defenders of human life and human dignity make strides in the forums of language and philosophy, progress will become noteworthy in the struggle to overcome the present trend of society to dehumanize everyone.

Certainly, the struggle to reverse the holocaust of abortion stemming from Roe v Wade will be ended if the United States Supreme Court ever acknowledges the personhood of the unborn child.  A human being is a person from womb to tomb.  Language and philosophy prove the aforementioned beliefs, tangible quantitative or qualitative measurements cannot prove the aforementioned beliefs.

I was particularly impressed by the conclusions Paul Byrne and J.C. Evers published in the Fall edition of Pharos Medical Journal:

A human being belongs to the species, Homo sapiens, and as such, is a person throughout his entire life, still when dying.  There are attributes of a living human that do not belong to other species, e.g. thinking, judging, loving, willing and acting.  When it is predicted that the living human being will not be capable of demonstrating these attributes again the living being does not then belong to another species.  He is still a living human person.  To say that a patient on a ventilator declared ‘brain dead’ is a body certain to die and, therefore not longer a person is contrary to reality.
“Great care must be taken not to declare a person dead, even a moment before the fact, as the later is a fundamental injustice.  A person who is dying is still alive, even a moment before death, and must be treated as such.
“In conclusion, we believe there can be destruction of the entire brain, but there has not been found any criteria that have been established to reliably determine this.  A cessation of brain function is not the same as destruction, [nor is cessation of brain function a guarantee that irreversibility will inevitably be indefinite or permanent.]
“At the present state of the art of medicine,, a patient with destruction of the entire brain is, at the most, only mortally wounded, but not yet dead.  Death ought not be declared unless there is destruction of the respiratory and circulatory system and the entire brain.  (P.A. Byrne, J.C. Evers, Brain Death, Still a Congroversy, “Pharos,” 53,4,1990,p 10-12)

That quote from Byrne and Evers convinces me that since death is a fact and dying is a process, only God knows at what point of the process of dying the internal animating/activating principle (that we call the soul) that causes the individual to live actually separates from the body.

Earlier I made the observation that language and philosophy have historically changed ways of thinking and societal sensibilities.  In an attempt to go forward in the war against threats to human dignity, may I propose that we take steps to use language and vocabulary that is conducive to sensibilities that are more pro human dignity?

Before we change ways of thinking that will later lead to changing laws, we must first change our use of vocabulary and language.  In my humble, but I believe accurate estimation, the term “brain dead” is totally supportive of the enemies of human dignity, and use of this term by us is totally self-defeating.  When we use the term “brain dead,” we are employing the language of those who are proponents of the immoral selling and harvesting of human organs.

We need to we stop using the term “brain dead” and begin to substitute the term “the quiescent brain” since no one is at present able to know and reveal whether all parts of the brain of a patient are permanently incapable of resuming activity and thus restoring the complexus of the human body to a more life-like state.  The term “brain dead” instantly implies that the cessation of detectable brain activity cannot be reversed.  To use the term the quiescent brain does not imply irreversibility or cessation of brain activity.  It is imperative that the term “brain dead” be replaced with a term that is more pro human dignity.

Just as in the case of abortion, when we ceded the right of abortion proponents to describe themselves as “pro-choice” rather than “pro-abortion” we lost a great deal of ground to them in the popular mind.  Therefore I seriously propose the term:  “quiescent brain” instead of “brain dead”.

To engage in this philosophical war requires renewed courage and determination.

The task before us is to proclaim the dignity and sacredness of the human being and to prevail in our efforts to prevent the killing of innocent persons for the sake of helping another person through the transplantation of their organs while they are still alive.

“To admit and publicly insist that many brain-dead patients are deeply comatose, severely disabled, living human beings is progress, not regress.  It will force a refinement in our understanding and diagnosis of death.  It will force a clarification in our fundamental philosophical principles regarding human life.  It will force a realignment between our understanding and our consciences in dealing with these most vulnerable human lives.”                                                         (D. Alan Shewmon, Brain-Body Disconnection:  Implications for the Theoretical Basis of Brain Death, FINIS VITAE, p. 251)