Mary Roach's Essay 'How To Know If You Are Dead'

The essay How to Know if You’re Dead was written by Mary Roach, who described her
experience at the hospital while watching the process of a transplant surgery. Roach is an
“author, specializing in popular science and humor” (Wikipedia). Her motive for writing this
essay was to explain to the readers; what does it mean to be dead and when does the soul leave
the body. The notions and events that occur in the essay provoked emotional responses ranging
from sympathy to fear within the readers. However, out of all the notions and events that
occurred, three were very important: Roach’s experience at the hospital, the descriptions of the
doctors/ nurses/psychiatrist, and the attitude towards a patient.
Roach experience at the hospital

starts off with her waiting:
“on one of the surgery floors of University of California at San Francisco Medical
Center, watching gurneys go by and waiting for Von Peterson, public affairs manager
of the California Transplant Donor Network, and a cadaver” (Roach 1).

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Roach describes the cadaver, known as H, as “both a dead person and a patient on the way to surgery” (1). H has a beating heart since she is hooked up to a respirator and is properly cared for by nurses before her surgery is performed by a surgeon coming in from Utah. However an abdominal recovery surgeon named Andy Posselt will perform the first part of the surgery by cutting open H torso and making sure the organs (for transplant) are accessible enough for surgeon (from Utah) to remove them. Alright, so the beginning portion of Roach’s experience demonstrates that the audience who are reading this essay are educated people. For instance, Roach mentions that there is a cadaver named H. She describes H in detail by saying:
“H doesn’t look or smell or feel dead. If you leaned in close over the gurney, you
could see her pulse beating in the arteries of her neck. If you touched her arm, you
would find it warm and resilient, like your own.” (1).
Most uneducated people might interpret Roach as an unusual person since she pressed near to the cadaver and smelled/ touched it to see if it was a real. However, on the contrary, the majority of educated people would not look at this scenario as a weird thing. They probably assumed that Roach was inquisitive and wanted a closer view of the cadaver. Furthermore, they could infer that due to her interest in the cadaver she wanted to investigate H so she could put her curiosity to rest. Now, continuing Roach’s story of her experience at the hospital. After Roach finishes examining H, she ponders the definition of death for a while. After she completes her thoughts she observes the abdominal recovery surgeon Dr. Posselt, while he uses an electric cauterizing wand to cut open H torso starting from Above H’s pubic hair to the base of her neck. Roach is amazed at the procedure and is even more astonish when Dr. Posselt saws H’s sternum lengthwise, then uses a retractor to widen the width of the torso so that
Reyes|3 all organs are exposed and accessible. Roach goes into detail about how doctors knew if a patient was dead or not without the tool of a stethoscope, since it wasn’t invented yet until the mid-1800. In addition, she talks about the present day doctors and their technique in knowing when a patient is dead or not, through the use of the improvement in stethoscopes and gains in medical knowledge. Moreover, Roach describes the different eras in history and their opinions on what they think is considered the most important organ for keeping a human alive/ where does the soul lie in the body. So stopping here in Roach’s story, the premise that is already stated is defining death. Death is defined as being brain dead since you are unconscious. This premise walks the audience towards the main claim since Roach describes through the essay the difference and similarities between a dead patient with a beating heat and a dead one that has no pulse. Roach states “H the person is certifiably dead. But H the organs and tissues is very much alive” (1). Also another premise that she will state later on in her essay is the term locked in state. Locked in state is a disease in which the nerves from eye balls to toes, suddenly/ swiftly drop out of commission, resulting that the body completely goes into paralyzation, while the mind remains normal. Roach relates this topic to the cadavers like H in which they are brain dead and all of their organs are still alive in which are set for donation of organs. She states that:
“On rational level, most people are comfortable with concept of brain dead and organ
donation. But on an emotional level, they may have a harder time accepting it,
particularly when they are being asked to accept it by a transplant counselor who
would like them to okay the removal of a family member’s beating heart. Fifty-four
percent of families asked refuse consent.” (7).
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In addition to Roach’s statement Dr.

Oz (New York Heart Transplant surgeon) says “they (the families of the brain dead patient) can’t deal with the fear, however irrational, that the true end of their loved one will come when the heart is removed” (Dr. Oz, 7). This premise leads up to the main claim since it states why there aren’t enough donors in the world and why there is a long transplant waiting list too. Also it helps explain that even though the patient is brain dead, you should still treat them as a patient and have some

sympathy.
The descriptions on the actions the doctors/ nurses/families present, creates: fear, disgust and sympathy in the audience. For instance, when Roach talked about how, many families can’t give up their loved ones for organ donation due to being brain dead. The emotional response that come out of that is sympathy. As a reader I have sympathy for those families since they have to make a choice on whether to let their loved ones go or not. I don’t know if I would be able to do it if I were in their situation. Another event that created an emotional response from us readers, it was when Roach was describing the procedure in which Dr. Posselt opened up H’s torso with the electric cauterizing wand and the retractor. This event probably caused an emotional response of disgust since Roach was very descriptive in her words and made an analogy on the opening of H’s torso. The analogy was “He’s unzipping her like a parka... to see her this way, held open like a Gladstone bag” (2). Lastly, Roach mentions that before the mid- 1800’s, doctors created a way of test to see if a person was dead or alive. These test included: pouring boiling Spanish wax on patients’ foreheads, pour warm urine into patients’ mouths, put crawling insects into patient’s ear, etc. These events lead to a mix of emotional responses of fear and disgust. These examples portray evidences to which explain how the events within the essay could lead to many emotional responses from the readers/ audience. In addition, most of the evidences presented in
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the essay were facts since credibility were shown after each fact was stated. For example, next to each different method that was described to “how to know if a patient was dead or not”, a doctor was credited for the method. For instance, the method of the rhythmic tongue pulling was credited to French physician Jean Baptiste Vincent Laborde.
In the essay, argument was presented when Roach mentioned the different about being a dead patient and an alive patient.

In the beginning of the essay the nurses were treating H almost with the same quality as an alive patient. However once the doctors were done using H for her organs, they treated her as if she was a thing. For instance, when the resident surgeon finished stitching up H, after the Utah surgeon was done harvesting the organs needed for transplant, the nurse washed H and covered her with a blanket for the trip to the morgue. Von (transplant coordinator) and the nurse put H in the gurney and transported her to the morgue. Once they arrived at the morgue, Von said, “Can we leave this here” (Von, 10)? So, by the end of the transplant process H became a thing, and useless even, though she was able to save three patients’ lives with her organs. Roach believed that H shouldn’t be considered a thing and that she and other cadavers (that helped alive patients) should be considered the dead’s heroes. Another argument Roach mentioned was, what the most important organ was in a human body. Roach talked about the Egyptians and what they believed was the most important organ. They worshiped the heart once a person died and left it in the human body and took all the other components out including the brain. Another type of class she mentioned were the classical Greece, who believed that the brain was the most important organ since the soul was located in it. This

brings me to the next argument which is where the soul lies in the body. Roach asked Dr. Oz where he thought the soul was located. He replied, “I’ll confide in you that I don’t think it’s all in the brain. I have to
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believe in many ways the core of our existence is in our heart” (Dr. Oz, 7). Dr. Oz’s response troubled Roach since she didn’t know what to make out of his statement. She wonders, “Does this mean he thinks the brain-dead patient isn’t dead” (7)? Many doctors/ people debate about these questions since there are on hypothesis/ theories on these questions, since there are no actual facts to make one claim better than the other. Moreover, one assumption that can be stated within the essay is, if there is no brain activity within the patient then the patient is pronounced dead by definition. Even more, the opinions vary for most people in stating, what organ is the most important in the human body. However the essay assumes that the brain and heart are both almost equally important in keeping a human alive. Finally the essay states that due to families refusing consent to send their loved ones (that are brain dead) for donation of organs, this is the cause, why hospitals have a long list of people waiting for transplants since they don’t have enough donated organs for the procedure.
Roach discussed a lot of what’s going on in the department of transplantation. She described the amount of improvements that have occurred from before the mid- 1800’s to now. And discussed the main two questions that are still being debated even till this day. However all in all, the main claim was defining death.