BACK FROM THE DEAD

<{[Cheating Death: Back from the dead]}>

This week we have come to question the abstract idea of death and all that surrounds it. What does it mean to die? What does it mean to be dead? How long can death take? What is a meaningful life? How can you assure that ‘death’ has actually occurred to an individual, whatever the word may really mean? And what is the American hospital or doctor’s perception of this topic which is most likely influenced by the professional biomedical background that has trained them in these fields. Can we rely on a medical staff, from the EMT’s to the physician, to allow a miracle to take place on any given case, on any given patient? I’m aware that I’ve tossed several questions out there, but in addition, are there levels of death that correlate to human degradation that could possibly lead to one’s final announced death? We see different levels of the human body depicted in American biomedical systems as Lock mentions “in North America a brain-dead body is biologically alive in the minds of those who work closely with it, but it is no longer a person, whereas in Japan, for the majority, including a good number of physicians, such an entity is both living and remains a person, at least for several days after brain death has been diagnosed” (Lock 150). In Margaret Lock’s article “Living Cadavers and the Calculation of Death,” we see contrasting beliefs on how the body is to be treated after enduring trauma or nearly fatal conditions. In Japan, it seems as though the body is given every ounce of energy and hope to bringing it back to life; whereas, in America (I apologize for the extreme analogy) the body is seen as a market in a deserted town, waiting to be looted of its goods. This is similar to what Lock suggested as she says “such an entity takes on cadaver-like status and retains only the respect given to the dead so that it can, with suitable restraint and prior permission, be commodified” (Lock 150).

In Eric L. Krakauer’s article “To Be Freed from the Infirmity of (the) Age,” a lot of focus is put on life-sustaining technologies that medicine has slowly relied heavily on. Having the help of these life-sustaining technologies has given more time for doctors to solve the problem at hand, but at the same time, it has become an expected use. If the palliation is not registered with a patient, it is assumed the doctor is not trying enough to help save the patient, but if it is being used then there is a chance the death is just being prolonged and nothing might even come out of it. Talking about palliation techniques, “once they became generally available, not using them became difficult. In each case, withholding treatment, and particularly withdrawing treatment once started, was deemed unethical. Courts in the United States found legal grounds for disallowing the foregoing of life-sustaining treatments  for patients unable to speak for themselves, and occasionally legislators drafted new laws with similar provisions. Second, experience showed that life-sustaining technologies not only had obvious potential benefits for patients but could also be very burdensome. The great gift of this technology brought with it unforeseen danger of exacerbating suffering” (Krakauer 382).  In addition to the listed problems and dependency on palliation for life-threatening circumstances, there is a lot of money that has to go in to keeping the patient alive and breathing. With that being said, does this mean that a patient is valued based on how long they are on the life-sustaining treatment? Is there enough being done to prevent the patient from needing the life-sustaining treatment since the luxury of having it will always be there?

The news story that I would like to analyze is just one of many events that have occurred.  This particular headliner happened back in 2009, when a young man was pronounced dead after a night of bowling. Chris Brooks went an entire 20 minutes without a single contraction of the heart, and then miraculously came back to life without any brain damage (CNN). What caught my attention was the quote:

“Many hospitals and doctors don't know or want to use the latest techniques -- and so survival rates for cardiac arrest vary tenfold among major cities” (CNN)

Why would all these hospitals and doctors not want to use the latest techniques? This is an interesting question because it attempts to look at the way our (American) culture understands and copes with death. We see that in Japan it is much more difficult to detach oneself to a dying patient, yet we are seeing here that death in an American medical system isn’t avoided as much as other cultures. It could be possible that the medical system here sees death as “okay” in certain (and obviously more) lights. 

Maybe Chris Brooks didn’t just cheat  death; maybe he also cheated the medical system in America as well.  He was lucky that he was attended to by the best of resuscitation care, and didn’t have to meet the problematic depths of life-sustaining treatment. Chris Brooks’ story proves Krakauer’s point that “this attending and responding is what matters, not whether or not life-sustaining technologies are employed in the response” (Krakauer 394).

Works Cited:

"Cheating Death: Back from the Dead - CNN." Featured Articles from CNN. 12 Oct. 2009. Web. 04 Mar. 2011. http://articles.cnn.com/2009-10-12/health/cheating.death.chris.brooks_1_cardiac-arrest-survival-rates-doctors?_s=PM:HEALTH.

 

Eric L.  Krakauer.  2007.  ” ‘To Be Freed from the Infirmity of (the) Age’: Subjectivity, Life-Sustaining Treatment, and Palliative Medicine.”  IN  Subjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations.  Joao Biehl, Byron Good, and Arthur Kleinman, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press.  Pp. 381-397.

Margaret Lock.  2004.  “Living Cadavers and the Calculation of Death.”  Body and Society 10(2-3): 135-152.