The Washington Post, behind the opinions of two medical ethicists, provided some interesting and necessary information regarding two major new stories involving brain-dead patients. The two cases include a thirteen year old girl now on life support after a tonsillectomy and a brain-dead pregnant woman carrying a still living fetus.

According to Arthur Caplan, head of the division of bioethics at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City, and Laurence McCullough, a professor at the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, both hospitals are acting unethically in keeping their patients alive.

The case of thirteen year-old Jahi McMath, however, is clearer. Caplan and McCullough argue that McMath is already dead, that her body will begin to disintegrate, and that the machines driving her heartbeat and lungs are only mimicking life. Brain dead is just another form of death, according to McCullough.

"Orders should have been immediately written to discontinue all life support," McCullough told the Post. "The family should have been allowed to spend some time with the body if they wished. And then her body should have been sent to the morgue. That is straightforward. There is no ethical debate about that."

Most people don't understand the difference between brain dead, coma, vegetative state, and minimally conscious state, according to the bioethicists. In the latter three scenarios, the patient is technically alive; in the first, the patient is technically dead.

Caplan and McCullough admit the case of the brain-dead pregnant woman is significantly more complicated. Even so, they believe she should be taken off life support per the husband wishes.

"You have a pregnancy in a cadaver," which means the "law no longer applies," said McCullough. If the hospital wishes to preserve the baby, it should be treated as a medical experiment first requiring the approval of a board of advisors, according to McCullough.