Brain-death as an anthropological or as a biological concept

✍ Scribed by Hans-Bernhard Wuermeling

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1994
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 245 KB
• Volume: 69
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0379-0738
• DOI: 10.1016/0379-0738(94)90388-3

✦ Synopsis

In 1968, when the Harvard Committee defined brain-death to characterize irreversible coma, the question of when a doctor might stop resuscitation remained unresolved: braindeath is a safe, but not a sufficient criterion. Furthermore, the committee defined brain-death to be the death of man without any more than pragmatic reasons. Philosophers tried to give anthropological reasons, as important human functions are located in the brain. But this is misleading, for instance to concepts of partial brain-death. Biologically, however, the death of the whole brain disintegrates the organism and can therefore be accepted as the criterion for death of man.