Sometimes the medical term brain dead can be vaguely understood and loosely thrown around and applied. A 76-year-old woman in Quebec was in a coma and diagnosed brain dead by her doctors. They approached the family because they wanted to harvest the woman’s eyes for organ donation. Supportive of the concept, the family first requested additional testing be done. The next day the so-called brain dead woman awoke from her coma, sat up in bed and ate yogurt. In Sweden, for example, half the intensive care nurses who care for patients called brain dead doubt the methods used to determine their status. It’s very possible the move to save money under nationalized healthcare is driving the desire to get rid of expensive patients. And now we have Obamacare.
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