Definition of Death

The determination of death has become extremely complicated and confusing; even some medical experts find it hard to put it in words. A history professor at the University of Michigan, Martin S. Pernick explains this scenario in his work to show the inconsistency in the medical standard for clinical determination of death. In one of his lectures, Henry K. Beecher, Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain-Death, said in his 1970 lecture, “There is a need to move death to the side of the individual’s consciousness, and if loss of consciousness is permanent, then to declare death.” A priest asked in the discussion following this lecture whether he meant to add cases of coma with “spontaneous respiration…but no consciousness.” Unable to prove his point, Beecher replied, “Oh, then he doesn’t fit our criteria at all. We said no movement, no breathing.” However, early in a 1967 lecture he said, “Our basic concern is with the presence or absence of physiologic life.” Beecher moved back and forth between agreeing and rejecting the idea of consciousness as the true determination of death.

The definition of brain death has another aspect of organismic “wholeness” that has been compelling. The President’s Council claimed that the brain is the essential part of the body without which the body is unable to perform necessary functions and literally “disintegrate” the somatic system (49). Philosophically, there could be two types of death-- the death of a person (capacity for thought, reason, and feelings) and the death of the body or the organism (50). Philosopher John Lizza believes that the human being with the loss of all brain functions or even those required for consciousness is a “diffe...

... middle of paper ...

... gases between organism and environment and not the inner drive to breathe per se” is necessary for self-preserving commerce as understood by the President Council when it states, “If the death of the organism is to be prevented, some external ‘driver’ of the breathing process—a mechanical ventilator—must be used” (qtd. in Shewmon 21), then it is similar to a comatose or a totally paralyzed patient’s “self-preserving sensorimotor interaction with the environment” (21). In addition, he mentions that the inner drive to breathe is also absent in conscious patients with lower brainstem functions and during sleep for those with Ondine’s curse (“in whom the lack of drive is arguably also ‘irreversible,’ insofar as the person will die during sleep at least without ventilator assistance”), therefore inner drive is also “not a necessary feature of organismic wholeness” (22).