# Terri Schiavo  + 5 years

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terri-schiavo-5-years/533872>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [March 26, 2010, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terri-schiavo-5-years/533872 "2010-03-26T14:18:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 270

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**Author:** ![lekatt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lekatt/32/7269_2.png) [@lekatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lekatt)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terri-schiavo-5-years/533872/270 "2010-04-07T13:21:19Z")

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> [@Grumman](#):
>
> Imagine for a moment that someone got his arm bitten off by a shark - let’s call him Bob. Bob’s arm is completely removed from his body, with no hope of reattaching it. Would you feel comfortable saying that anything bad that happens to this arm will not hurt Bob? Even though you’re not in Bob’s body, would you acknowledge that completely severing the link between Bob’s brain (or his soul) and Bob’s arm means he can no longer feel anything that happens to it?
> 
> _That_ is our argument for why she couldn’t feel anything: the destruction of her brain either destroyed her, or severed her link to her body. Either way, the effect is the same.

Your argument fails to acknowledge that the brain is not the soul, nor the mind, nor the spirit, nor the consciousness of a human being. People have come back to life after being put in the morgue and a dead certificate issued. This is an area of knowledge not well understood by science if at all. We have some solid research now that shows the consciousness continues to live after the death of the brain and body. I can’t tell you how consciousness and brain interact and neither can anyone else. Science assumes it knows things it doesn’t even have a clue about all the time.

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