holland. the netherlands, of course. he had been a foundational change for the west worldwide. >> host: when you say china, what do you mean? >> guest: well, books that the kinsey institute put out. kinsey, the man who changed the world. they translated that into chinese. it sold 500 copies in 2007. i was contacted by chinese professors to asked, they said they looked everywhere for something contradicting. the change in sexual conduct among the chinese youth was enormous following the release of that book. ..

>> i began to look around and say, wait a minute. how did this happen? it made no sense. following the trail led me to doctor kinsey, which led me to hugh hefner, which moved me to the issue, which may mean that principal investigator for

images of children and playboy and hustler. >> should pornography be outlawed? >> yes. we don't lose anything by going back to that. it has had a huge impact on child sexual abuse. in another instance when i said that, i said that playboy had been producing child pornography and had been conditioning people based on our research for doj. playboy sued me for liable slander. i said sue me, give me a jury trial here. and the judge looked at all the documentation, the images that were included, they said she is

right. playboy loses. they loses lost to little old me. >> where and when did you get your phd? >> i received mine in 1980 in cleveland, ohio. i'm getting too old to remember these things. it was on communications, on the way in which mass communication changes the human brain and the human being and changes the culture. >> what you doing here at liberty university? >> i am bringing my wide knowledge to the faculty here, and they have taken my archive, which is massive in the next room. i have thousands of books and many thousands of documents, so that there will be a home for this material and we will be able to have a record of this

whole history of the history of sexual evolution as it was changed in the united states and the western world. >> and "sexual sabotage" is your third but? correct? >> depends on how you count. third or fourth. >> are you working on a new book? >> yes. >> judith reisman joining us at liberty university. "sexual sabotage: how one mad scientist unleashed a plague of corruption and contagion on america". she has been our guest. >> it was a delight to talk with you. i appreciate it. >> coming up next, "book tv" presents "after words." this week, dick teresi and his latest release "the undead." he argues the business of organ harvesting is blurring the line

between life and death. he contends that organ harvesting puts pressure on medical professionals to declare patients dead rather than keep them all my support an attempt to save them. he discusses his findings with transplant recipient sally satel. >> mr. dick teresi, nice to meet you. this book, and you written others about physics and history of science and even a book on the brain. how did you come to write about organ transplantation and death determination? >> i wasn't drawn to organ transplantation at all. i was stoned to death. the reason was i was watching carl sagan on the charlie rose show in the 1990s. he announced that he had had his second or third own marrow

transplant because of a cancerous disease he had. it saved his life. he had been saved by science. my wife looked at me and said, wow, he's going to die, and soon. and i said why do you think? >> this is the denial speech. she had cancer and she was in support groups. this is a speech who are given by those who are pronounced terminal. the show finished, and they announced that it had done everyone. that he had died. he had been taped a couple months earlier, and the man who had been saved by science was dead. he said an interesting thing in his show, which rose had asked him. he said what do you think that is? death is a long, dreamless suite. i thought well, that can be. sleep is pleasant. you are breathing, no chemical.

[inaudible] is going on. this is one of the greatest skeptics of our age. and he thinks he's going to be sleeping. what i wanted to do was try to find out what science said about that the motor was. i started with a simple question, which is how do we know when we are dead? and that ended up being the whole book. that is an impossible question. >> you have a very difficult question. and i imagine, particularly frustrating for someone whose sole professional life has been as a science writer, and someone who has written a book about topics like physics, where -- physics used to be pretty straightforward. when you get into quantum issues, it gets more complicated. before we get back to this great

determination of death, which is the essence of the book -- it is about you and your career, but a writer of science, i suppose. talk to me about omni magazine and other places you have worked at? >> i really haven't had eight career. i am a blue-collar guy that had a series of gigs and follow whatever was happening and whoever would hire me. i got a new job whenever i was fired, which was frequently. i grew up in minnesota, where some strange magazines were created in the 1930s. something called modern mechanics. there were all these futuristic magazines that came out of the world's fair of that era, i think 1932. during the depression when people were so depressed financially and emotionally, these magazines talked about this great future. i was inspired by that. and i was also inspired by sputnik when the country went

through a vast educational transformation in the country was looking for people who would be good at math would beat the russians in space. i had the math scores but not the real talent for it. so i never did do science, but when i got out of college, i was offered a job at a science magazine. i took it. it is a wonderful thing to write about. >> and you get from there to writing a book, which was a bestseller in 1993. >> how did you come to collaborate with him and what was it like working with a nobel prize winner? >> i had interviewed him for the magazine. he always had a big draw at physics and he was humorous. i suggested we did a book

together. he was a very easy man to work with. brilliant, but in a very common man kind of way in. >> you mentioned humor, and in fact, some who read that book so that was the funniest book about physics ever written. >> that's not a very high bar. [laughter] >> this is what some of the reviews have said as well. what is the role of humor in your writing or science writing in general? >> i think for many people, they feel it should not be a roll. my partner and i were criticized for doing so. i don't believe that. it is just a quirk of mine. i don't think that science writing has to be funny or doesn't need to be or should be. it is just the way i happened to write. >> it was just striking. striking that humor was remarked upon and both of them.

in writing this book, one of the themes that seems to prevail is it awakens you about a fair amount of anxiety about death. >> the first thing is that i really didn't think this out. if you think about it, you can't really study death totally scientifically because science is supposed to be incurable plus the experiments. but death, part of the definition of death is that it is the reversible and forever. when a person is dead, they can't come back and say we would like this. it's not like going to philadelphia where i come back and tell you about it. if someone does come back, a near-death experience, then they were not dead. that is part of the definition. i should have thought that out. what we are reduced to studying is never land -- the netherworld and bring death and it was

creepy. it was creepy reading about it and interviewing people about it. i started imagining myself in some of the states at times. waking up in the morning terrified. trying to tell people that i am really alive here, and like i was suffocating. i was very influenced by a book called the butterfly by [inaudible name]. it's where you're totally conscious, you have all your mental capabilities but your brainstem is down and you are paralyzed. he wrote a book with one eyelid, pointing out each letter at a time. it is really a beautiful book. that helped, actually. it was incredible -- here was this incredible person inside this sort of shell of a body. >> that is.

i remember learning about that in medical school when we had a patient. >> you had a patient? >> yes, with i did. >> what was it like? >> as i said, you can't help but imagine what it would be like. it sounds terrifying. >> back to you. now, you worked in a hospice a bit. was that part of the research for the book? >> i was always interested. it wasn't totally relevant to the book. i didn't see it as relevant. i wanted to do it. a hospice opened up a block and a half from my house. i went down there, and they were happy to have me because i was male. it is almost all women. among 60 of us, only two of us were male. i have always been interested in

death, so i wanted to see what these people were like. >> what were they like? >> they actually have a spiritual counselor, ap person who is not religious but spiritual. because you're not allowed to challenge anyone's religious beliefs. she made the comment once that for most people, they die as they live. it was lovely being with these people, but at the same time, you could see that whatever insecurities they had, they took with them to the grave. if they were shy, he continued to be shy. if they were afraid of opposing authority, they would still be timid around the director. they would be -- they could be bullied in some ways been bullied by the volunteers. who you are is how you die, is what i learned. there were mormons. there were moments. i did things i wasn't supposed

to do. you aren't supposed to challenge people, and i had this one patient, let's call him this. biff. tran-nines was complaining about his wife he would not come see him in the hospital. he would go on and on about what an awful person she was. finally i said look, chennai, you don't have much time left. do you really want to go to the grave complaining about this woman? i suggested he write a letter to her, and i will help you. he said i don't know how to write it. i said you will dictate it and we will write it down. you will think of all the great things about her. you can either send it or not send it, but i think it might change your attitude. i haven't heard anything great about her. so we did. it took a couple weeks, and we

never finished it because she came back. magically, she appeared one day at the hospital and became a devoted wife for the last few weeks of his life. later, when he died, she found the letter that he had dictated to me among his belongings and think of me very much. he had never expressed this to her with. it was against the rules, but i thought it was kind of a cool thing to do a. >> it sounds very moving. denial of death. that is a big theme in this book. tell me about it and tell me about -- you have a whole chapter which i found interesting about how -- the universal nightmare, of course, is being very alive and how so many cultures have different

ways of trying to prevent that from happening by trying to build a mechanism to distinguish the living from the dead. over the millennium and across history and cultures. can you tell us about some of the more memorable examples? >> only in the 18th century was death medical eyes, as they say. where doctors became in charge of who is dead and alive. up until then, regular old people decided when the next of kin were dead. the egyptians, for example, and the quest was to find was there a singular organ, then when it was gone, -- or was there a set of behaviors that would tell you this person was definitely gone.

the egyptians, for example, had no use for the brain. when they made mummies, a hollowed out the skull and threw it away. they would prop up the genitals and mummies. the greeks, they would cut off a finger and think that was a violent thing to do, which would wake you up. in the eighth or 10th century, they would wash the body, make a lot of noise, and on the third day they would sing slavic folk songs. if you don't stir from those, you are dead. if they got no reaction after the singing, you were dead. the pope has pope has a very famous way of being determined to be dead. that is what a cardinal level pope. this person decides when the pope is dead. he had some three times in the

head with a silver hammer, and says his baptismal name three times. even today, the pope is not dead until the cardinal says he is. doctors may pronounce death, but he has the final say. it is a good system because first of all, he is someone close to the pope, and when he declares the pope dead, his job is over. he is not likely to do so prematurely, declare death. the gold standard, through the century, what is the thing that we really -- when this happens, the guy is dead -- when you just smell the high heaven. what this smell does is implodes and gushes out, all your cells are dead. if you kept switching from the hearts of the lungs, to the

brain -- it is somewhere where we see the brain come to the forefront during the renaissance were people believe it is the determining organ. i think one thing -- to figure out why this happened, you need an interdisciplinary approach. i think the heart has a lot to do that. i think, therefore i am. you see it in shakespeare, writing about how we are the common creation. we are the noblest of beasts. that man is somehow different from animals. we started to have a definition of death that was lower, really, for humans. so much more was expected of us. we have brilliant minds and we are not dumb animals. when our mind and brain does, then we are gone because then we become like animals. for example, with brain death, no one ever talks about the

brain death of a dog. the brain is considered unimportant of a dog. it is not scientific to say that this species is different. it's what we believe, but it is unscientific to say that. that is what we have come to today. we have the lowest standards for debt in the history of man with brain death. >> in some ways, the most contested. it is always unethical of a conundrum in medicine when a person becomes a body. >> yes. what i found -- you mentioned that i covered part of physics, it is true. i never heard particle physicist talking about their feelings. i feel that this is a proton. they never says that. they have physical tests. medical profession talked very openly about its dealings. we feel that these reflexes and

indies brain-dead people -- we feel it's not important, as opposed to other scientists were they say that we have these tests that we did. we did a cat scan on this person. we show no biochemical activity in the brain. but we are not doing that. we are just going on people's feelings. >> we will get to that a little later. that is actually a good portion of the book. we will certainly get to that. i wanted to move into technology, because, as you know, new technology especially in medicine, takes concepts and practices that seem to be settled and ships them. in the case of organ donation and death determination. that was really your overarching

interest. that technology has to be the ventilator. >> yes. >> wouldn't you agree? >> yes. it starts with william harvey. the english doctor who researched the circulatory system. he chopped up ahead of the a rooster, and he had his own ventilator, which was a chimney below. he stuck it in the windpipe and pushed air into the rooster's lungs, and it revived the rooster. you could keep this rooster alive without his head. in 1903, cushing, an american surgeon, thought that if the person has fatal brain damage, it are they alive or dead? he gave a speech on artificial

respiration. and he was able to keep one patient alive for 23 days this way. the heart continued to beat wildly gave him artificial respiration. in the 40s and 50s, a remarkable thing happened. it was the polio epidemic. there was a proto- ventilator. it is a better ventilator than ventilators we had later. there were entire floors of hospitals devoted to iron lungs and kids who had -- who would otherwise die without them. we have less bulky methods now, all these people being kept alive. at that time, not today, but in that time, they were crowding of the icus. this pushed a group of people to form the harvard ad hoc

committee on brain death. to come up with this new definition of death. >> we will come up to that as well. right now, who are the undead? that is the title of your book. >> i think it would include the brain-dead and people in persistent vegetative states and minimally conscious people. and those who have near-death experience. those are the people that i looked into that are as close to death as you can get without dying. of course, the organ transplant people would say that they are dead. >> and how do they make that determination? >> the original harvard paper in 1968 says that they have no

reflexes and no movement, and it was determined by an apnea test, where the ventilator is turned off. if he can't, he is dead. then you repeat all of these tests. anywhere from two hours to 12 hours later. the clinical side of the tests, looking for reflexes and movement, it involves squirting ice water in years, touching the cornea with a q-tip, bringing a flash light and seeing if the eyes follow it. if you are alive, it takes a while for your eyes to adjust to the movement. but if they aren't all sides, they go sideways. i just noted that from the time

of the transcript that we had, it was part of my last eye exam. originally, the harvard committee said that they should be confirmatory test. these tests only test the brainstem. the stock at the base of the brain. it doesn't test the cortex, which is what most of us think of as our brain. it is where we think and feel and where we feel pain and pleasure. where we see things. your things. so you should take an eeg of a patient to see if there are any brain waves. these confirmatory tests, they have actually decreased through the years. not increased. as more technology has been developed, it has not been used. for example, pet scans, which are used in england, persistent vegetative state patients, to see if they were really

unconscious. unlike a brain-dead person, their stem is working. >> she was probably not there for what the autopsy says. but the brainstem is functioning but the rest of the brain is gone. and you have no consciousness. it is estimated there are something like 100,000 people in pvs in this country alone. in the tests for pbs were devised in the 1970s by a man named fred. he said you don't need technology or equipment, just do these things. a lot of it had to do with examination of the eyes and reflexes. when you put pet scans in england, a doctor named adrian owens, he said 43% were

constants. these are the people we have judged it to be unconscious. he had devised ways to communicate with them. through canvassers. her years, the families of these patients had said that our son or husband or whatever -- they seem very aware when people he likes comes in. you can tell from his expression. ..

>> host: has been used experimentally where you have to imagine yourself playing tennis, and this activity, this is introduced again, technology introducing a whole other wrinkle into the conversations. >> guest: you should know though this technology is not used to test -- >> host: not used to test? >> guest: we're note going back to eegs. >> host: right, for reasons

we'll come to, and that's an important point, and you'll emphasize that in the book, and if i understand you correctly, who would you leave it to or what process do you feel would be more appropriate? >> guest: well, i think what philip said, on an airplane, the captain comes over the intercom and says we have an emergency, is there a doctor on the plane? you never hear because there's a writer on the plane, and we say the wings are on fire and go back to our drink. i don't have advice about what to do about it. i'm -- i'm, you know, i'm out of want. any plan i would come up with is so fatally flawed it would be

worth lest. for most of human history, people >> not left it to doctors. what we have now, since 1981, there was a law passed, uniform determination of death agent, and it's now law in all 50 states, and what it says is there are two forms of death out there. there's regular old heart and lung death, and there's brain death. they are both legitimate. there's only one person who decides who is dead, and that's the doctor, and that doctor can want be faulted. he cannot be arrest the. charged criminally for saying someone who is alive is actually dead, and he can want be sued civilly in court. not only have doctors taken over the area, but they have no

responsibility either. >> host: speedometers -- responsibilities they pass up, that's for sure. that case wildfire the last two year -- that case within the last two years in california of the a surgeon who was examined from prematurely taking organs from people who were not believed to be fully dead. >> guest: was he arrested? >> host: he was investigated, not arrested, but people take it very seriously because that's the point. >> guest: was the party declared dead? >> host: well, this was a case of non-circulatory death opposed to brain death. >> guest: oh, okay. >> host: you can see more about the general requirements for obtaining organs or at least the official ones. i know you're spectacle they met

the thresholds and requirements, but -- >> guest: well, we have what's called the dead donor rule which is notup verse sal, as -- universal as you know, but that's the only organ from live donors is the kidney. everything else comes from a dead donor. there's two kinds. one is brain dead that we have spoken of, and begins the last 15 years, start taking organs more often from those who die by conventional means, heart and lung. some doctors think that's stairier than the -- scarier than the brain dead because you have to wait for the person's heart to stop and immediately transplant it before it spoils it in layman's term. there's a short time window, and all sorts of segments are used

such as -- batch les like a threat pressure cuff put around the donor to keep the blood pressure going after the heart stopped, keep the organs artificially profused. sometimes chemicals are injected. the problem is waiting for a man or woman to have a heart attack, and what happened in the real world is a person with a heart attack, you try to resuscitate them. they don't try. in some ways, it's the two minute drill because after the heart stops, you wait two minutes and harvest. some people wait three minutes, others five. in either case, people's hearts have been started long after five minutes. >> host: the families give permission for this; correct? >> guest: yes, yes.

well, yes and no. interesting point. that's the debate. new laws where you check it off as a donor on your driver's license, that's theoretically binding in all 50 states, and even the if next of kin says, no, we don't want this to happen, the doctors can still do it. they don't like to if the family puts in an objection, they put in objection and try to calm the family's fears. if you're used to the brain dead type of donor, and that's what you are thinking about when you check off that box, are you thinking that you're going to go through this new process of where you're what's called a notary public-beating heart cadaver, where they are waiting for your heart to stop before they harvest you. >> host: believe they need to interview the family before they

do that. >> guest: well, by some emphasis, i'm thinking maybe they don't. that's a debate. do they really have to do that? that might cut down the number of organs. this method is not new. >> host: before 1968? >> guest: yeah, in 1967 was the first heart transplant, and the problem there was darnell was the donor, and her heart wouldn't stop. they had a recipient waiting, and her heart kept beating. her brother, years later, had been at that day, injected potassium to temporarily start the heart to declare her dead and remove the heart and put it in someone else. now, that's illegal today.

not illegal, not part of standard practice today, you have to have two different teams. a separate team that declares death and the other team who harvests. >> host: the fire wall is incredibly important. >> guest: yeah. >> host: that's one of those people who were reluck at that particular time to sign the organ donor card. they're not going to take care of me, doctors won't try to save me if i'm a donor. >> guest: no, it's the opposite. they want you healthy. you may get the best care of your life if you're a donor. that's another controversy, can you give parties drugs only meant to keep their or gaps healthy? i have no benefit to the party. in other words, are you already treating them as a bag of organs before you declare brain death or treating them as a patient? of course, after they are declares, you get superb treatment because -- well,

frankly, brain dead people are bilogically alive in my opinion and the opinion of many people because they hooked them back up to the vent later, the hearts continue to beat. they can get infections. their immune systems will fight upfections. they have heart attacks. they can be resuscitated. the language in the journal is very interests because one of them warns that the nurses taking care of beating heart cadavers, a brain person awaiting harvest, they said be careful because it's one of the complications of death. usually when people die, you don't worry about complication, and there was a 2008 paper

report from the president's council and bioethics saying some dead people are less healthy than others. you know, i don't, to me, death should be -- there should be healthy dead people and less healthy dead people ring they should all just be dead. >> host: that's when a person is declared brain dead, the cortex is to be said, is the consciousness, the engine of consciousness and perception is pain, and what makes us human, recognizably human, think and feel, and there's the brain stem which controls the breathing, and other basic functions, and the reflexes, and that's what they are tested for in brain death determination, but they can be, an eeg, for example,

which you think to be saying, believe they should be used? i'm under the impression they should be used? >> guest: it's not a very good test, and as brain death advocates rightly point out, it's artificial waves that made -- there's a lot of equipment in the hospital, it may be picking that up. there's other results too with a flat brain wave, but they are alive. it's not a good test. you could have -- there are ways in the interior of the brain that doesn't pick up. it's not a good test, but there are other tests. the reason they don't do eegs is because clinical test part of it harvard criteria, the water in the ear, flashlight, the reflex, and the apnea test, those are

called the critical parts of the test, when they were based on no patients at all. they looked at no parties and cited no medical papers, no scientific papers. they just spun this out to meet these cry criteria. there were two groups after that in the late 60 #s and 70s that decided to look at actual patients who had passed the clinical definition of death to see if they were truly dead by down autopsy, and they found doing autopsy on brain dead is a clinical criteria. many of them, their brains had not self-destructed. they didn't look dead at all. when they put eegs on some of them, remarkable number of minority, but five out of nine

in one case still had eegs before they died, and another less scary was 17 out of 500 brain waves after they were declared brain dead. >> host: you're making a good point, and one that i wondered if it's a little obscure in the book because i came away from the book, and also in the article you wrote in the "wall street journal" which was that eeg was abandoned irresponsibly. >> guest: well, it was. >> host: okay, well, then i'll just -- actually, i have -- i just want to elaborate a tiny bit on what you just said about the fact that you have false positives and false negatives, and that's the very reason why it was abandoned, i believe. >> guest: i didn't see them

saying that. they say that now. they say that after the fact, but they said that in 1969 to 1972 there were not any dead people. you know, they said because we got some of these tests, the tests must be wrong. they threw it out. they didn't add something. you should add something. if you think the e, g is flawed, and it is, then what do you do to confirm the upper brain is dead? they said let's do nothing. >> host: well, that actually gets, i guess that gets to the american academy and now one of the questions i had was that, you know, the 1968 was obviously decades ago. >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: and now brain death determinations is done somewhat

differently as you say, and the eeg is not part of it because there's so many complications and medications can give you a flat line or hype therm ya. >> guest: you can pass all the clinicals for brain death also. >> host: and many other reasons, i got this from the textbook, and the point is you know there's other reasons why someone could have an eeg that looks acceptively active or inactive. that was 1968. clearly, much has happened. new data accumulated and new technologies came online, and the american academy of neurology set the standards for brain death determination and issued guidelines in 1995 and 2010, and i wondered how come those were not mentioned in the book. >> guest: they are hardly different. as you say, there has been a lot

of technology added since 1968, and the writers of the article said as new technology comes along, we hope it's adopted. we're testing the cerebral cortex. they are neurologists. interesting thing is that the harvard committee has 13 men on it, 12 of them were doctors. not one -- mostly they were neurologists full of transplant people, and they came out and said this brain death is exactly the same as the heart lung death. they had no cardiologists to tell them that. they didn't let cardiologists on

the committee. they had no one an education pert on heart op lung to say, oh, yeah, this is exactly the same because i don't think they believed that. they set up tests they have now been abandoning. the new tests just sort of -- it's rearranging decks on the tie -- titanic. >> host: let me read from the academy of neurology because it can be from the realm of the abstract and what's been taken into the ultimate dimension as any patient declared brain dead by the american academy of neurology standards, similar to the one's mentioned without the e, g? have any of them ever awake ped, and in this 2010 report, it's actually called evidence based

guidelines, an update on determines brain deaths in adults, and the objective of the report was to update the 1995 guidelines with respect to several questions, but now what's relevant are patients who fulfill the criteria for brain death, do they ever recover neurolog -- neurological function, and they found it know, but that's the ultimate empirical test to me. >> guest: how would they recover if you take their organs? >> host: this is brain dead criteria. >> guest: people pronounced brain dead? >> host: it doesn't -- no everyone, certainly, you know, and as you the the conversion rate, what the conversion rate refers to is, yeah, you know correctly that very few people

die by the term -- >> guest: less than 2%. >> host: less than 1%, and then not all of those use their organs. the families, depending on whether they know the person's wishes are likely as not to donate, and i just bring it up as another perspective. >> guest: it's been done every year from 1968 that no one survived brain death. this happened every year. >> host: said it in 2010. >> guest: 2010. have you read shuman's report? they say these people will die quickly. they'll quickly go to car cardiopulmonary death.

>> host: sometimes. >> guest: can be 20 years. before the form on bioethics acceptedded it as true, and pointed out there were 150 cases opposed to zero where people did survive longer than the week. the first brain death was promoted, we said couple hours to a day. if you're brain dead, you put your back in the ventlator there's little time for your heart to stop. >> host: what about the quality of life? just noting that, there that was not something, and some of the folks who reviewed the book noticed that. i can't cover everything in the book, i appreciate that, but what about the quality of life? even if you are brain dead, and you survive, let's say, 20 years

on a respiratory, that's an ethical question again, about when one disconnects that. there's a quality of life dimension, and that's something that wondered if you had comments on that because not thatch on it in the book. >> guest: there's nothing. i don't think there's anything on it. it was not my concern. i was trying to answer this question. when is it person dead? not should they be kept alive forever. i was not making any miranda rule judgments on -- moral judgments on whether they should be kept alive forever. i don't think i would want to be. is this really death? i mean, quality, you know, i think i have a life as a freelance writer, and people would say i would rather be unplugged than your life and the unsecurity of it, but i decided to go on not unplugging myself.

i can't make those decisions. is this death? as soon as you go through puberty, you're on the slippery slope to death. is this life not worth it? i'm just saying is this person dead or not dead, and i don't see where brain dead people are dead. the president's counsel wants to push it a step further. they want to harvest 100,000 plus people in vemg at a -- vegetative state because they don't think their life is worth living. they want to harvest those people. >> host: they hoped the neurological standards were valid, and you know it well, and it was -- >> guest: what year? >> host: 2008, the president's

council. >> guest: if you read that carefully, they suggest the persisted vegetative state person could be harvested. >> host: the way i read it they were trying to adjudicate between people who thought the threshold was too high and too low, and those who thought maybe somebody like individual instances, it's debatable, no question about that, and that might be appropriate candidate than others who felt, in fact, that we might even return to the cardiovascular standards. they had to adjudicate -- and mostly people on that commission were bioethics b and folks not directly involved with transplantation. that's different from harvesting. it's a debate for sure. >> guest: no, they made a decision, in fact, they made recommendations on how to

harvest a pvs people. they don't want to the people's eyes would be open, and they would be breathing. we really have to give these donors sedatives as not to upset the doctors. i'll find you the reference, but that's true. >> host: moving on to you. i noticed we're moveing along and just have 10 # minutes. you mentioned in here you have diabetes. >> guest: yeah. >> host: that's one of, as you know, a bigger risk factors for ultimately developing rhino failure, and not saying you will, but about half of all folks who ultimately need kidneys in this country is because of diabetes. if you did need a kidney, what would you do? would you go on dialysis or accept a kidney, have you

thought about that? >> guest: probably just follow my cards. i'm 66. if i were 30. >> host: you're fiesy as can be. >> guest: i'm 66. i've lived my evolutionary usefulness. i just live in a society that's so entitled. i don't believe i'm entitled to more years. i had a good life. this is good. >> host: okay. okay. you had actually -- you have a nice few pages in here about the, you said not so much the pitfalls of avoiding death, but of that time you have between now and death, and there were things that one should do or at least you should do. can you talk about that? >> guest: yeah, well -- i -- mundane examples. this sounds pretty silly, but we

waste so much time in our lives, and i'm just sort of just don't want to waste anymore times. like i don't go to weddings. they don't work out. whether they work out or not, i realize probably not dependent on my attendance or not attending. i had just a funny conversation with my roofer, you know, when i was 60, i had to put a new roof on. he said do you want 30-year shingles or 40-year shingles for a few dollars more. that's odd. i can choose between shingles that last 15 years after i'm dead or 30 years after i'm dead. he said, that's a funny way of thinking about it. i said, it's a perfectly reasonable way of thinking about it. things are temporal. i don't want to waste time. i don't want to do things i don't want to do. i want to get things done that i

have not done. it's just people's worries now just amuse me. you know, i'm 66. i'm living on borrowed time, i've avoided the pitfalls of life. just have a good time. >> host: this was a therapeutic exercise for you, anxious about death, and now you are fill philosophical. >> guest: people say i seem relaxed. i point this tome it's because i'm going to die. >> host: this is about you. >> guest: i thought they brought you in here because you had that. >> host: that got me interested in the topic, and i'm concerned about the shortage certainly. >> guest: it's very different. >> host: those are the donors i want to see more of. >> guest: are you close to your donor?

>> host: much closer now than i was. we were not that close. she was from a third party. it was quite, really leaves me speechless with gratitude. amazing thing she did. >> guest: when was her reason for doing? >> host: just a fine, really humanitarian impulse. she did know me, but i'm more than happy to talk with you about this after because i'm passionate about increasing living donation, and i think we might compensate people for their organs, but that's another issue. what i want to know from you is you wrote a simple controversial book. i don't believe your others have been this controversial; right? >> guest: my one that was non-white, the debt we owe to ancient non-western cultures. that got a lot of, you know, yeah. o