经济学人下载:怎样死才算死？

Psychology
心理学

How dead is dead?
怎样死才算死？

Sometimes, those who have died seem more alive than those who have not
有时，死人似乎比活人更"活"。

Aug 20th 2011 | from the print edition

IN GENERAL, people are pretty good at differentiating between the quick and the dead. Modern medicine, however, has created a third option, the persistent vegetative state. People in such a state have serious brain damage as a result of an accident or stroke. This often means they have no hope of regaining consciousness. Yet because parts of their brains that run activities such as breathing are intact, their vital functions can be sustained indefinitely.

通常，人们都比较擅长分辨生者与死者。然而，现代医学技术创造了第三个选项——永久性植物人状态。处于这种状态的人，其大脑因意外或中风而严重受损。这经常意味着他们没有希望再恢复意识。但是，由于他们大脑里负责某些生理活动（如呼吸）的部分仍然完好，所以他们的生命机能可以被永远维持下去。

When, if ever, to withdraw medical support from such people, and thus let them die, is always a traumatic decision. It depends in part, though, on how the fully alive view the mental capacities of the vegetative—an area that has not been investigated much.

何时撤走维持他们生命的医疗手段，任其死去（如果真的要这样做的话）？这是个痛苦的决定。不过，这在某种程度上取决于真正活着的人如何看待植物人的心智活动能力，这个领域人类还未作过深入研究。

To fill that gap Kurt Gray of the University of Maryland, and Annie Knickman and Dan Wegner of Harvard University, conducted an experiment designed to ascertain just how people perceive those in a persistent vegetative state. What they found astonished them.

为了填补这个领域的空白，马里兰州大学的库尔特．格雷和哈佛大学的丹．魏格纳进行了一个实验，旨在确定人们如何认知植物人。实验结果令他们大吃一惊。