Dead For A Week

A science blogger uses the case of twelve-year-old Motl Brody to explain brain death:

When a child suffers brain death, it's incredibly difficult for the parents to accept that the child that they love is dead. After all, the child is still warm, still smells like their child (and smell is a very primal sense), still has a beating heart, and still looks like a child. It doesn't take religion for parents to go into profound denial over the true situation. However, there is no doubt that religion can be a powerful force that can reinforce such denial, but something as simple as a parent's love for his or her child. Accepting the concept of brain death goes against every human instinct with regard to telling when someone is truly dead. Throughout thousands of years of human history, it was obvious when a person is dead. Now it's possible to be dead and not appear so, thanks to the technology of the last 40 years or so.