Harvest The Dead Analysis

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In this article, Harvesting the Dead by Willard Gaylin, we are challenged to think about the consequences brought with new medical technologies and a new definition of death. In 1968 Harvard Medical School newly defined death as an irreversible end of all brain activity now called “brain death”. A concerned Gaylin describes a new kind of cadaver that would have the legal status of one who is dead but with none of the traits one usually associates with death. He calls theses new kind of cadavers “neomorts”. These neomorts could be kept in “bioemporiums” (wards/hospitals where neomorts are maintained) for organ transplantation, medical training, drug testing, and experimentations of all kind. The neomort…show more content…
It is accepted that medical students need to train on cadavers before moving on to living patients. The neomort could allow this medical training to extend much further. I think it would be easily justified to do more experimental procedures on the neomort in order to bring more confident skills to procedures on the living. Gaylin also extends this experimentation to the testing of drugs on the neomort. This experimentation could be attack as unreliable. If you test a drug for side effects, you will not see all the adverse reactions in a neomort. Imagine a blood pressure medication with vision side effects, would this be noticed in a neomort? I do agree that drug testing would be tried on the neomort, but could be determined too unreliable. Gaylin then argues that the more controversial uses, banking and harvesting, will fix current problems of organ donation. There is a short period of time in which an organ is available for harvesting and transplant after the donor is dead. Having a stock of vital organ donors would erase the time restrictions. There is also such a supply shortage, especially of vital organs, that banking would be hard to turn down with 10,000 people dying per year while waiting for organs (Munson,2008,463). Gaylin is justified in predicting that the wholesale salvage of useful body parts is not without

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