When is brain dead really brain dead?

On Sunday it was reported that the 11-year-old son of Usher Raymond’s ex-wife, Tameka Raymond, was declared brain dead in an Atlanta hospital.

Kile Glover and a 15-year-old female companion were struck by Jet Ski as they sat in an inner tube on Lake Lanier around 3 p.m. Friday.

Kile was unresponsive when he was airlifted to Egleston Children’s hospital. According to gossip website TMZ.com, diagnostic tests determined that Kile was brain dead. There has been no confirmation from Tameka or Usher’s camps.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that Kile remains in critical condition as of this morning.

Debates raged on black Twitter yesterday among users who read about incidents of people supposedly waking up from brain death.

One such case is that of Zack Dunlap, a 21-year-old Oklahoman who was declared brain dead 36 hours after flipping over on his 4-wheeler ATV in 2008. Dunlap, a registered organ donor, was being prepped for organ removal surgery when a family member, who was a nurse, performed a basic reflex test on his hands and feet.

The family member used the dull edge of a pocket knife and pressed it across Dunlap’s foot. Dunlap responded to the painful stimuli — something that would have been impossible if he was really brain dead. The organ donation surgery was promptly cancelled and Dunlap was able to leave the hospital 5 weeks later.

The obvious conclusion in Dunlap’s case is that doctors erred when they based their conclusions on a PET scan which may have been faulty. A PET scan, which measures the flow of blood inside the brain, should have been one of the tools used by doctors to determine brain death — not the only diagnostic tool as was the case with Dunlap.

In Kile Glover’s case — according to TMZ — a more precise brain scan (EEG) was performed to measure his brain signals. An EEG determines that a patient has no brain activity — a condition that is not sufficient to sustain life without artificial means.

2 EEG’s performed 24 hours apart is considered the standard procedure when diagnosing brain death, though PET scans are still being used by many hospitals. In Dunlap’s case, it appears that doctors were negligent in not performing basic nerve reflex exams on Dunlap before scheduling surgery to remove his organs.

Some critics accuse the hospital of ignoring obvious signs that Dunlap was not brain dead because the hospital was in a hurry to harvest his organs — a profitable side business for many hospitals.