https://www.lifesitenews.com/analysis/brain-dead-people-are-being-used-for-science-experiments/?utm_source=most_recent

Imagine an intensive care unit full of people. Monitors glow with electrocardiogram tracings, blood pressure measurements, and oxygenation readings. Ventilators whir as air is pumped in and out of lungs and feeding tubes drip nutrients. But these people are not getting better. They are “neomorts:” people with severe neurological injuries whose families have consented to allowing doctors to use their living bodies for experimentation.

In a recent podcast, bioethicist Arthur Caplan proudly proclaimed that he has pioneered using critically disabled people for research at NYU Langone Health in wards that he calls “bioemporia.” Dr. Caplan says that he discovered the idea of neomorts and bioemporia in an essay written by Dr. Willard Gaylin, a psychiatrist, for Harper’s Magazine in 1974 called “Harvesting the Dead.” In his article, Dr. Gaylin was pointing out the ethical risks inherent in the brain death concept by suggesting (tongue-in-cheek) that we could stockpile these neurologically injured people (who he christened “neomorts”) in centers called “bioemporia” — where we could experiment on them to our hearts’ delight.

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Caplan says that not only is there now a bioemporium at NYU there are dozens starting up all over the country using “brain dead” people for drug testing and other research purposes. Caplan admits in the podcast that people with a brain death diagnosis are not biologically dead but that their “deaths” are a social construct — which is why they can be successfully kept on life support for these experiments.

It is highly unlikely that the families of these unfortunate people are being informed that their loved ones are only “socially dead” when doctors obtain “consent” for these experiments. When people who are registered organ donors have infections or other conditions that make them unable to donate, the family is approached and asked if doctors might keep their loved one on life support to do some tests. According to Caplan:

We started by saying that it might advance transplant. We’re going to study something, maybe an artificial organ or some immune suppressing drug. And if you give us permission — they wanted to be organ donors, but they can’t, they clearly wanted to help — let’s do it that way. And if the family concurred (which reminding listeners, they don’t have to legally in an organ donation situation, but we were trying to be safe here in this idea of studying the body) if we take them for 72 hours, would you give us permission? And a lot of people did.