If you were a Star Trek fan you knew one thing, the security guys always ended up as toast. The monster/alien/Klingon/whatever got to him and then Dr. McCoy would sigh, and stare sadly saying "He's dead Jim". Then he's shut is tricorder and sigh, certain nothing more could be done.
Last week 13 miners were trapped after an underground explosion in a West Virginia mine. Mine work is difficult and dangerous, and the highest standards have to be maintained if people are to survive. Only the price of energy is up and suddenly coal is making a comeback. The mines are expected to deliver more than ever. On this one day in a troubled mine (recently repurchased, so the troubles may NOT be the fault of the current owner) something went badly wrong. Originally we'd heard there had been a miracle. Twelve were reported alive.
My friend Jude grew up in that country. She watched as the news came out, only the high fives seemed to be only among the family. Nobody had confirmation. No details. Worse, an hour passed and the men hadn't gotten out of the mine. Jude told me that when they get to a miner who's alive they get them out right away. That didn't happen. It turned out the early report was wrong, only one man got out alive.
If you can call it alive. Randal McCloy was said to be improving in both brain and organ function as I write this. But every one of the doctors expects that if Randal McCloy survives he will suffer permanent and severe brain damage.
If that's the case, perhaps he didn't survive after all. Life is a verb. What makes us human isn't heartbeat or respiration but consciousness, our individuality, the humor and personality we bring to this life.
From what I hear that's all gone now. McCloy may live as Terri Schiavo lived, bedridden, rolling his eyes and being fed through a tube. Is that really living?
We define death as the moment when a person's heart stops beating. It's a good measure in many ways. It's clear and if a heart starts beating the rest of organs cannot be far behind. Or we have a thing we call 'brain death' defined by a flat EEG. But those clear measures aren't adequate in an age when hearts can be stimulated electronically and breathing replaced by machines. Death in today's society has a lot more to do with the condition of their brain than anything else. If the brain stem is operating you have an eeg, but nothing resembling consciousness. The little electronic squiggles mean something, but they are not the measure of a man.
The difficulty is that a more dynamic definition of death is by it's very nature ambiguous and debatable. If Bill Frist can (for partisan political reasons) diagnose Terri Schiavo by film as having hope, then how shall we deal with cases like Randal McCloy's, particularly in an age where most of us are completely unwilling to face death.
I'm not sure where to draw the line. I'm not a doctor or philosopher. Perhaps doctors themselves like the traditional definitions because it spares them from having to make a terrible decision. I'm not sure it can be made quickly, as in the case of a person whose eeg is flat-lined. But the definition needs to be changed.
If my mind is gone, if I cannot converse and exchange ideas, If I cannot watch an auto race without feeling the thrill of competition, if I do not feel a bit like weeping when i hear Aaron Copland's "Saturday Night Waltz" then I am dead, the person I am destroyed. I don't want to see my property mortgaged so well-meaning people can pour fluids into a tube in my stomach and roll me over every hour. At that point I'm just taking space, sucking resources in a world where I can never again contribute. I will be dead.
It is too early to know if Randal McCloy is dead by my standards. I'm not even sure how long the waiting period must be. But his survival was not a miracle. That would have come if he had walked out and kissed his wife. Today it seems unlikely he will do either again.