[Elrond]

Some people say that human life begins at the stage of the zygote, because the soul or whatever you call it takes possesion of the apparatus at that point. Though this is not an unreasonable stance, may I ask when a human stops being a human? Should a human that is brain dead and is being sustained mechanically have any human rights, does it have an awareness? When a person dies, at what point of decomposition does the soul leave the body?

This is something that I have never seen discussed, but I don't see how it varies greatly from debating at which point the soul or awareness enters the body. Intuitivley, this might seem more obvious; it seems pretty obvious that the soul exits the container when the container is dead. But it isn't a given. The cells aren't dead yet, and if a zygote can be considered to be a human (a cluster of cells), than a newly deceased person can also be considered a person, even if that person has no hope of development.