When Are You Dead? Science Just Made the Work of Religion a Bit More Difficult

Think of the implications for: my life (now I can communicate with my family, my health care providers); my care (now I can respond to questions about my health care and comfort); health care in general (do we now spend the time and money to do an MRI on every person thought to be in a vegetative state?); understanding of the conscious and the unconscious (in what kind of thinking-space am I living?). As is often the case, in the scientific paper explaining this new MRI-thinking, most of these issues are either ignored or barely brushed up against (although, to the journal’s credit, the article is accompanied by an editorial that begins to explore some of these issues).