re: #202 FemNaziBitch

I did a google for “corpse as incubator” and “has an animal’s corpse been used as an incubator” and got nothing useful.

From the comments section of this terribly misleading article over at Time. I don’t know enough to know if what the commenter says is 100% correct, but it seems sensible based on what I do know.:

DeweySayenoff 1 day ago

@ZanyRobertsYou could have googled this, but since you ask, and since I know the answer, yes, the heart beats on its own. In fact, it usually does, since that’s not a function controlled by the brain.

For example, people with broken necks who die don’t die because the heart stopped. They died because they stopped breathing - a function reliant on certain parts of the brain stem. Unlike the lungs, the heart has its own electrical system, and a lot more tolerance to hypoxic (lack of oxygen) conditions than the brain does. So the brain can be completely dead (no activity at all, even in the brain stem), the lungs WILL stop working on their own (which is the case for this girl since she’s dependent on the ventilator) but the heart can continue to beat until the rest of the organs fail (and they will because many of them rely on some function in the brain through the endocrine system).

For this girl, it’s a matter of months before the breakdown of her organs proves too much for her heart to continue to work and it will stop. The sad part is that at that point, NONE of her organs could be donated to help save a life. They will deteriorate beyond the point of viability. Unless they act soon, the family will eliminate their opportunity to give this girls unexpected death some meaning, if not to them, then to others they don’t know.

The only thing that confused me was: If the brain stops, causing the lungs to stop, wouldn’t that deprive the heart of oxygen and cause it to stop?

Anyway, I can’t stay—too much work to do. Mondays, yuck.