"Perhaps this sounds like an academic concern-the kind of subject reserved for philosophers and priests or even medical ethicists like me. But don't be fooled. This is a profoundly relevant debate for anyone with a healthy kidney, heart, lung, or liver that could be transplanted to save the life of someone else. In other words, the question of when a person is dead affects almost everyone alive."
"For as long as we humans have walked the earth, we have, like all animals, died. And for millennia, this was fairly straightforward. To the observer keeping watch at the sickbed, granddad would breathe his last, and his skin would start to turn ashen and cold. Within a couple of hours, his body would go stiff, signaling certain death. From Homer to Tolstoy, historian Philippe Ariès argues, death's debut was obvious and followed a predictable pattern."
Historically, death was determined by the irreversible stoppage of the heart and lungs because their joint function supplies oxygen to the brain. In 1968 a Harvard committee established brain death as an additional legal criterion for death. Currently three New York physicians propose expanding the definition further to include irreversibly comatose patients maintained on life support. The proposed change has major implications for organ donation because it could increase the pool of transplantable organs. Visible signs like pallor and rigor mortis once made death obvious to observers. Social and educational status has influenced recognition of death.
Read at Psychology Today
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