More evidence has come out against Joe Biden. That’s great and all but I don’t care. Let’s talk about it.
Should we keep the law off the sports field? Even murder?
And, on the day of the dead, let us talk about death.
Some Thoughts
I have some thoughts about the melting down of the Robert E. Lee statue. Listen to my podcast to hear my rant.
I Don’t Want to Hear About This Anymore
According to the Post Millennial:
On Monday, Rep. James Comer claimed that the House Oversight Committee had uncovered evidence suggesting President Joe Biden received $40,000 in “laundered China money.”
He outlined how the cash allegedly made its way from a Chinese company to the current president in 2017 via a series of companies, and Biden family members.
“Remember when Joe Biden told the American people that his son didn’t make any money in China?” Comer began. “Well not only did he lie about his son, Hunter, making any money in China, but it also turns out that $40,000 in laundered China money landed in Joe Biden’s bank account in the form of a personal cheque, and the Oversight Committee has it.”
This is all such old news. We have known this crap for years. It’s time for Republicans to do something about it.
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-joe-biden-received-40000-in-laundered-china-money-from-family-oversight-committee
It Was Murder
According to the Daily Wire:
Police said Monday that they are investigating the death of former Pittsburgh Penguins forward Adam Johnson, 29, who died during an Elite Ice Hockey League game on Saturday.
Reports and graphic video indicate Johnson collided with another player during a game in England and suffered a cut to the neck from a skate, NHL.com reported.
The South Yorkshire Police, who were called to the scene on Saturday, are investigating the incident.
“Our officers remain at the scene carrying out inquiries and our investigation into the circumstances surrounding the incident remain ongoing,” a statement said, according to Fox News. “We would encourage the public to avoid speculation regarding the incident while we continue our inquiries.”
Johnson’s team, the Nottingham Panthers, have called the fatal collision a “freak accident.”
How Do They Know?
Here is an opinion piece in the Washington Post called What is the line between life and death? Here is my answer. by Peter Singer. Singer is philosopher and bio-ethicist from Princeton. Which means he’s socially worthless because he over thinks everything.
Where, exactly, is the line between life and death? Does the answer change if the person asking is not a philosopher but a transplant surgeon eager to save a life? Or a patient desperate for a new organ?
I love that he conflates philosophy and a surgeon that performs organ transplants. Philosophy has to be one of the most worthless degrees ever created and they are wrong half the time.
This summer in Honolulu, a body of lawyers known as the Uniform Law Commission tried to agree on an answer to that profound question. Appointed by the states and territories to recommend model legislation for adoption nationwide, commission members were tasked with revising the standard of brain death widely used in the United States for some four decades.
They couldn’t do it. Last month, the group’s chair emailed those involved that it had “decided to pause” the effort, without explaining why. My hunch? Once discussions began on how to change the definition of death, the group realized it had a question on its hands for which there is no consensus.
Namely: When it is justifiable to end a human life?
This is the problem, especially in medicine. People have been asking this question for a long time and no one wants to have the discussion because they don’t know and it’s too uncomfortable.
We kind of need to have this discussion because policies like abortion, euthanasia and organ havesting maybe risking the lives of innocent people.
Here’s my answer: When consciousness has gone, never to return. Other bioethicists have different views. No surprise there. But on this we should all agree: These differences need to be hammered out in public, not behind closed doors by a body that few people have heard of.
Question, what does that mean? How do you know when someone has lost consciousness and it will never come back? Then the bigger question: What is consciousness?
This is the job of philosophers. They answer questions that open more questions then they answer those questions and on and on.
The last effort to define death in the United States was in 1980, and at that time, there was remarkable consensus on a decision so consequential. Then, the commission proposed a new Uniform Determination of Death Act establishing that in addition to the traditional determination of death by the heart ceasing to beat, a person is dead when their whole brain has irreversibly ceased to function. All 50 states and D.C. adopted the act’s central proposition — which is staggering, really, given today’s battles over when life begins.
You can see why the government dropped this definition.
Since then, the widespread acceptance of brain death has led to many lives being saved, because donated organs are more viable this way. In 2021 alone, organs were removed from 9,674 people after their brains had ceased to function but their hearts were still beating. Under the heartbeat standard, surgeons could have been charged with murder in these cases.
Here’s the problem, we don’t know how the brain works. We don’t know how most drugs work on the brain. Pain, for example, is a function of the brain. We have no idea how drugs that hide pain work.
Yet the brain-death standard presents some confounding consequences. Patients declared brain-dead need a ventilator to breathe, but their bodies remain warm and supple. They can fight off infections, and their heart rate and adrenaline increase in response to injury. At least a dozen have gestated a child to birth by Caesarean section.
All bodily functions are controlled by the brain, including blood pressure, heart rate and pregnancy. Stress is a brain function that manipulates all aspects of the cardiovascular system. Question: Is it possible the brain isn’t dead if any part of the body still functions?
The answer Is yes and that’s why a lot of medical doctors don’t consider “brain death” bodily death.
Usually, doctors can convince skeptical families that their loved one is no longer alive. They failed in the widely publicized case of Jahi McMath.
McMath, a teenager, went into Children’s Hospital Oakland in 2013 to have an abnormal tonsil taken out. She suffered catastrophic postoperative bleeding and was declared brain-dead two days later. But her family refused to accept that she was dead and took the hospital to court. The court ordered an independent medical exam, which confirmed the diagnosis of brain death. The family indicated that they would appeal. In a compromise, the hospital allowed them to transport their daughter, on a ventilator, to a hospital willing to accept her as a patient. For the next 4½ years, Jahi’s bodily functions were maintained. She even got her first period.
Only when Jahi’s heart stopped in 2018 did her family accept that she was dead.
This is an fred op case to bring up, but it does support his argument.
Here’s the problem, he doesn’t bring up examples of people being in a coma and considered “brain dead” and have come out, In time, fully functional. These cases are not common, but they do happen.
The brain is very resilient and will repair itself.
This and similar edge cases have raised awareness that the standard tests do not prove that all brain function has ceased irreversibly. One reason is that the tests cannot distinguish between zero blood flow to the brain and a rare condition in which blood flows at a level too low to detect but sufficient for the brain to regain some function.
There is the problem. Our tests are very flawed when it comes to the brain. Maybe we shouldn’t make rash decisions until we do have the technology, if we ever get it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/17/brain-death-transplant-heartbeat-law/