The solution, we believe, is to broaden the definition of brain death to include irreversibly comatose patients on life support.
Brain dead patients are the only ones who truly meet that definition you slimy fucks.
Anyone with enough brain function left to have basic reflexes and pain responses has a, typically incredibly small, chance of regaining consciousness. We don't have enough detailed, high resolution understanding of brain function to narrow down on the exact type of damage that leaves the potential to adapt around the damage and regain sapience, we just have the incredibly rare examples of it happening. Except to brain dead people.
What they really want is to extend the pool of organ donors to "very probably irreversibly comatose, tiny chance they're just taking a very long nap and will wake up retarded". Which in a world of ever fewer resources may well be a valid proposal for society wide net benefit. But stay the fuck away from ethics conversations if you're going to just lie to people about what you actually know is definitely irreversible to get what you want.
Theres also rare examples of locked in syndrome where people in a coma for a long time were floating in and out of consciousness and can accurately report things the staff were doing, and the only way we know this is because they happened to wake up.
Brain dead patients are the only ones who truly meet that definition you slimy fucks.
Anyone with enough brain function left to have basic reflexes and pain responses has a, typically incredibly small, chance of regaining consciousness. We don't have enough detailed, high resolution understanding of brain function to narrow down on the exact type of damage that leaves the potential to adapt around the damage and regain sapience, we just have the incredibly rare examples of it happening. Except to brain dead people.
What they really want is to extend the pool of organ donors to "very probably irreversibly comatose, tiny chance they're just taking a very long nap and will wake up retarded". Which in a world of ever fewer resources may well be a valid proposal for society wide net benefit. But stay the fuck away from ethics conversations if you're going to just lie to people about what you actually know is definitely irreversible to get what you want.
Theres also rare examples of locked in syndrome where people in a coma for a long time were floating in and out of consciousness and can accurately report things the staff were doing, and the only way we know this is because they happened to wake up.