Sample Argumentative Essay On Will Tommy Vladek Survive?

Question: Suppose that the boy whose brain Tommy could receive is named Sam. According to Harry Vladek, Dr. Nicholson, John Perry, and you, who is most likely to come home from the hospital, Tommy or Sam? Is there any good reason to believe the operation may result in a double death (both Tommy’s and Sam’s) even though the brain of Sam and the body of Tommy live on? Speculate what, if anything might be different if instead of Sam’s brain, Samantha’s brain were used.
This paper talks about the conundrum that exists between two characters’ survival following a dreaded operation—a brain transplant, in a work entitled The Meeting. In order to successfully analyze the situation it is important to know who is who and what is what in the story. In order to know who has the biggest chance to survive in this question of personal identity rather than of medical technicality, it is important to know the characters involved. Tommy Vladek is the main character in the story . There were a lot of descriptions that the author used so that the readers can have a basic idea how he looks like and how he behaves in front of his family or other people, or when he stays at school to study and of course to interact with other people. Using all those descriptions, one can only infer that Tommy has a mental disorder. He may be retarded or he could be suffering from a certain form of cerebral palsy but one thing that any reader can be sure about is that his mental processes are not similar to that of a normal individual. One day, an incident occurred that rendered Tommy Vladek brain dead or is as the people working in the field of medicine call it, comatose (i.e. in a state of coma).
This means that following the said incident, Tommy’s brain virtually died, ridding him the ability to think and process thought processes, at least voluntarily. He would also be asleep most of the time. The only thing that remained was his respiratory and other survival functions. Tommy’s body was fine. The only thing that got damaged was his brain, albeit in the worst way possible. This means that Tommy is virtually dead and the only thing that can be considered alive is his body. His parents were later on informed that there was another boy who got in an accident. The boy’s name was Sam.
The problem with Sam was that his brain is still completely functional but his body is the one that covered up all the damage. At this point, one can deduct that when it comes to current medical condition, Tommy and Sam were complete opposites. All that Tommy has been left with was his body while all that Sam has been left with was his brain. It has to be established early at this point that both Tommy and Sam can be considered dead (although the reason why they have been considered to be so are different) because either one of them lacks the mental or the physical ability that can describe being alive.
A medical procedure wherein Sam’s fully operational brain would be removed from his already dead body and then transplanted into Tommy’s fully operational body (after removing the dead brain of course) was suggested. The question now, however, would be who between Tommy and Sam can we consider the survivor. The survivor, of course, would be the one who is going to be alive. There are a lot of ways how one can determine who among these two personas gets to survive and one of the most effective ways is by looking at how the author used personal identity theories to select the victor, the survivor. In general, however, it would be beneficial to reveal that at least based on his judgment, it was Tommy who would be the one who would probably not survive the operation—something which automatically gives us an answer—that Sam was the one who survived. It can be fairly easy to agree with the author’s assumptions and statements about whom among the two would survive.
However, the more important question to ask and the more important question to know is how the author came up with such an answer. From the scenario, one can assume that by combining Tommy’s fully functional and largely unscathed body and Sam’s fully functional and operational brain, we are creating a new person, but not a new identity. This is because a person’s identity is more or less dictated and regulated by the brain. But what makes up an identity. Identity can be defined as the collective notion of a person’s character, belief, ideologies, and personality that makes him stand out or simply be different from others.
This notion is often generated by a person’s brain starting from that person’s birth of consciousness up to the point of death—or in this case, brain death. This collective notion is not the work of the brain alone—for this collective notion to be created there has to be stimuli—lots of it, and this stimuli come in the form of life experiences. Each person has his or her own collection of life experiences. Even twins have a different set or collection of life experiences. This is allegedly what makes every person unique—an idea which translates the term identical into a word that often creates fallacies. So, using these concepts and ideas about personal identity, it would be easy to deduct whose identity was left following the medical operation (i.e. the brain transplant).
It is important to note that using the concept of whose identity was left following the procedure is, as it appears, the same method that the author used to deduct who between Tommy and Sam survived. So, using this qualification as a basis, it would turn out that Sam is indeed the one who survived and not Tommy.
Besides the concept of identity and the mind, the concept of body transfers may also be used to support the idea that between Tommy and Sam, it would be Sam who will survive the operation—because after all, it is his brain, therefore his memory, personality, character and hence identity that will come out. The concept of body transfer is often popular among people who believe in the concept of life after death. One of the facets of this concept explains that when a person dies, that dead person’s soul may go into another body so that that same person, via his soul can continue to live, albeit in a different body. Therefore, if we are going to follow the concept of body transfer and the ideas that support life after death and the mechanism of soul and thought transfer (i.e. life continuity via body transfer), then it can be deducted that between Tommy and Sam, Sam would still be the one who will emerge as the victor, the survivor, or the benefactor.
When fully applied to Sam’s case, it will be Sam who will benefit from the body transfer because he will be the one acquiring the body and not Tommy. Tommy’s role in that case would only be as the donor of the body—body that he does not need any longer because his brain already died, even though the story was framed in a way that most readers would tend to think that Tommy would be the benefactor of the transplant when in fact it was Sam all along. Of course, the only time that the characters in the story would have known this truth is when the transplant already went through and it is already time for the doctors and Tommy’s family to check and confirm the outcomes of the procedure.
The only problem in that situation would be Tommy’s family would presume that the person waking up from the coma would be their son Tommy only to find out that it was going to be Sam. Sam, on the other hand, may be shocked at first—this may be due to his expectation of seeing his own family members and not Tommy’s. Tommy, on the other hand, would simply be lost in the equation, although it can still be inferred that he is there, although only physically.
Now, when it comes to the question, whether there is a possibility that the scenario would end in a situation where both Sam and Tommy would be dead, the answer is yes. Realistically, brain transplant is an impossible procedure because once the connections to the brain get cut off; it dies after just a few seconds.
Also, up to date, there is still no recorded history of a successful brain transplantation operation. This means that if there is going to be one reason behind the possible double dead situation, it would be the failure of the medical staff to successfully transfer Sam’s brain to Tommy’s still functional body. However, based on the author’s way of talking and method of outlaying presumptions, and also his apparently voluntary omission of the possibility that the operation may not be successful at all, it would seem that this double dead situation is highly unlikely.
So in summary, I, the doctor, and Perry, all agree to the fact that between Tommy and Sam, Sam is going to be the one who will survive. This has been supported and evidenced by different theories of personal identity such as the concept of identity, body transfer, and life after death, among others. Nonetheless, they all point to the same thing or the same ending—that Sam is the one who will survive although in order to do this, he would need to Tommy’s body because after all, he was just another victim of an accident. It is just that he was lucky it was not his brain that got damaged like what happened to Tommy.

Works Cited

Pohl, F. and C. Kornbluth. "The Meeting." (n.d.).