Dear Ubiquitin,
To make the issue more tenable, I am writing from the perspective of life existing independent from any specific organ. (Like, maybe my hair clippings after a haircut are alive.)
Brain death was not used until 60 years ago. (It was first detected in the late 1950s.) Before then, Death was proven by absence of heart and/or lung functions. When brain death, was clinically diagnosed (proven) there was a fear of people being declared dead, even though their major organs still had independent capability of life. (I’m not sure how science based that fear was, even then.) There is no brain death without total cessation of the lungs. So, the question as it was posed became obsolete.
I thought the resistance to using brain death today, is a fear of hospital bias. And, that the person is breathing on their own, but only because the vent is in. Or, some idea that science cannot determine life or some other thing like that.
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