The "New Death"

Read an article in the BBC this morning about a doctor who wants to revise the definition of death used in the UK.

Right now the medical definition of death is based on brain death -- the cessation of brain function. Apparently this is confusing to some people because a body can be kept alive on life support after the brain is no longer capable of cognitive processes, and so a body doesn't "look" dead.

The definition of death as brain death came about in the 1970s because it made organ harvesting (there's an agricultural term if ever i heard one) much more feasible.

Now a doctor is aguing that the definition of death needs to be revised to fit more in line with people's preconceived ideas about death (ie, when the heart stops) rather than "medical pragmatism."

I have 3 reactions to this:

1. What's wrong with medical pragmatism? He says it like that's a bad thing.

2. Our definition of death needs to be based around our definition of life. We need to ask ourselves not what is it that makes a person dead, but what is it that makes them alive? Where does the essence of a person reside: in the heart, as Dr. Kellehear seems to be advocating, or in the brain? Well, since we can perform a heart transplant on people and they are still the same person after that they were before, the heart doesn't seem to be what makes a person a person, or what makes them alive. The essence of a person resides in the brain. When the brain is gone or dead, there is no coming back. The body may still show symptoms of life, but the person is gone. That then, truly, is death.

3. Dr. Kellehear is approaching this from the wrong side. There is a descrepancy between what is medically death and what people percieve as death, but rather than altering a sound (and pragmatic) medical definition to suit the general public's uninformed sensibilities, we need to focus on educating the general public and slowing altering the general social perception of death.