What Brain Dead Really Means

Lately, all over the internet there have been arguments about what the term "brain dead" really means. A few days ago, a hospital went to court with a family after the family asked the doctors to keep their daughter on life support after she was declared "brain dead." The article can be found here but it first explains what the difference between brain dead and a coma is. When someone is in a coma is a prolonged state of unconcsiousness and it resembles sleep. A coma does not usually last more than a few weeks and most of the time the person who was in the coma ends up waking up and go into a vegetative state which many patients can recover from. Brain dead on the other hand menas that neither the two parts of the brain are working. But, when someone is brain dead, there still may be a heart beat but what does that really mean? 

Cynda Hylton Rushton, professor of clinical ethics at Johns Hopkins University said that "The term "brain dead" can be misleading because it sounds like a person really isn't dead. If someone dies of a heart attack, doctors don't say they're "cardiovascular dead." 

I agree with Cynda Rushton that the term brain dead is misleading but I also believe a person is truely dead when they are announced brain dead. I think doctors should be more clear about what brain dead really means and explain that no one has ever recovered or woken up after being brain dead. I understand why the hospital wanted to pull that girl off of life support but I also think that the doctors should have been more clear to the family that brain dead really does mean dead. I feel very horrible for this family and I wish their daughter would be able to recover but science has proven that it is not possible.