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There is a large number of sites - particularly fundamentalist Christian sites - claiming that the people who meet the diagnostic criteria for brain death are, nonetheless, capable of recovering.

For example:

  • The Truth about Organ Donation: No such thing as "Brain Death"

    [Japanese and German critically ill patients] are being treated with hypothermic therapy. Published results are reporting that 60 to 70 percent of patients are recovering. This is a remarkable success rate!

    Patients with the same types of injuries or conditions in the USA and other countries are deliberately being hastily declared "Brain Dead" so their organs can be taken.

  • KGOV's Real Science Radio (podcast)

    Real Science Radio's list of "brain dead" patients who've recovered tells shows that doctors and hospitals are sometimes dead wrong.

  • Organ Facts' "Brain death is not death"

    There were never sound scientific or philosophical grounds for a redefinition of death based on the loss of testable brain function while the body remains alive

    [...]

    [...]the apnoea test, which might lead to the misdiagnosis of respiratory centre failure if inadequately stimulating. If stringent, it might prove lethal

Many examples are given. When I searched for some of the names of the alleged victims, I found multiple pages of similar credibility nearly exclusively. I could find no scientific or other veracious sources.

Is a diagnosis of brain death reliable, in that the patient is not able to meaningfully recover and become conscious again?

Oddthinking
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johnny1723
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  • @Brythan I slightly changed the post to fit the criteria. Is that better? – johnny1723 Jun 22 '19 at 15:30
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    Wikipedia has [a large section discussing the difficulty of defining death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death#Problems_of_definition). It doesn't seem to be particularly controversial to say that _diagnosing_ brain death is difficult, and there is no universally agreed method, which renders the question of "surviving after a diagnosis brain death" rather complicated. – IMSoP Jun 22 '19 at 18:10
  • As well as being difficult to diagnose, the definition of death has changed over time, as medical science and technology improved. What's "dead" today may not be so in 20 years. – hdhondt Jun 23 '19 at 02:39
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    @IMSoP: Actually, that does seem to be controversial. [This article](https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMp1400930) in the New England Journal of Medicine argues it is well-entrenched in practice and law (in at least 45 states of the USA), it is clearly defined, and says it gives families the ability to know that their loved ones "absolutely beyond recovery". It doesn't give sources, so it is not useful in an answer, but it challenges your comment. – Oddthinking Jun 23 '19 at 02:53
  • @Oddthinking good rewrite, thanks! – johnny1723 Jun 23 '19 at 09:33
  • @Oddthinking: I can't read the whole thing, but that would appear to be an editorial. This suggests *to me* that brain death's suitability for this purpose is not entirely settled, because otherwise the NEJM wouldn't be publishing opinion pieces about it in the first place (geology journals don't publish "the Earth is round" editorials, or at least not very often). – Kevin Jun 23 '19 at 16:09
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    @Kevin: We are basically agreeing. Teasing out the issues: Is "brain death" philosophically/religiously equivalent to death? Article has opinoin, but it is irrelevant to the question. Is brain death well defined? IMSoP says No, article says Yes. Is brain death easily detected? Article says No (without reference). We need a reference for the answer - if doctors make mistakes, then a diagnosis is unreliable. Is brain death permanent? Article says Yes (in passing, without reference). We need a reference for the answer. If an accurate diagnosis isn't permanent, then it is unreliable. – Oddthinking Jun 23 '19 at 16:19
  • @Oddthinking I said that the definition of *death* is difficult, not the definition of *brain death*; "death = brain death" is one definition, but as you acknowledge the article expresses an opinion not a consensus on that. I then said that the *diagnosis* of brain death is difficult and varied, a statement which you say the NEJM article supports (you phrased the question as "Is brain death easily detected?"). We are therefore all agreeing: difficulty in diagnosis of brain death probably answers the question, but is hard to write a well-referenced answer for. – IMSoP Jun 24 '19 at 09:39
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    @IMSoP: Oh no, I misspoke and caused confusion (including to myself). Sorry. I should have written: "Is brain death easily detected? Article says **Yes** (without reference)" Here's a quote: "There are clear medical criteria that can be reliably and reproducibly utilized to determine that death has occurred. If professional standards are followed properly, there are no false positives." Again - they provide no reference to support that claim, so I don't trust it. – Oddthinking Jun 24 '19 at 13:11
  • Whenever human judgement is required there will always be some room for error, and there have been cases of people recovering at least some cognitive faculties after being declared brain dead. However, claims that 60-70% of brain dead patients can potentially make full recoveries sound highly suspect to me, as do claims that people are being allowed to die so their organs can be harvested. Everything about that article sets alarm bells ringing for me because it just screams of the author having an agenda that has nothing to do with scientific fact. – GordonM Jun 26 '19 at 06:51
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    I started some digging into the topic and noticed that the first quoted article was misinterpreted by you (and probably deliberately by the aouthor). It says that **critically ill patients** can recover if treated with hypothermic therapy (which is true according to my research). It never said that **brain dead** patients recover. Hypothermic therapy slows down metabolism and gives weakened brain cells (after a stroke or asphyxiation) time to recover. It doesn't "cure" brain death and isn't applyed to patients after they're diagnosed with brain death (at least not in Germany). – Elmy Jun 27 '19 at 12:12
  • @Elmy And note that while they are hypothermic they may **appear** dead to all tests. Take a patient cold enough and there are no meaningful life processes, but this doesn't mean they can't recover. Typically it's been used for brain operations but it is being explored (apparently successfully in Europe) in other situations to buy the surgeons time to repair catastrophic damage. – Loren Pechtel May 12 '22 at 03:08

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