On Brain Death

by Roger White, March 1994

Brain death isn't a question of death; it's a question of life. Should we save lives or follow tradition?

Life is a complex process. It isn't simple to grow and it isn't simple to die. Birth and death are signals, they aren't the process of living or dying. Birth is the signal that a baby will no longer be fed by the mother's placenta, and that he or she can be treated as an entity independent of the mother. Death is the signal that a person will no longer need feeding at all, and that he or she can be treated as an ancestor.

In both cases real life is more complicated than the signal, but as long as our ability to intervene in life processes didn't change much, it wasn't important that the signal and the process were different.

Now the difference between signal and process is important. Thanks to advances in medical science, we can measure death more accurately, and if we do measure it more accurately, we gain the benefit of saving lives. Adding brain death to the definition of when a person dies will save lives.

Brain death is actually two questions in one: "When should a person be declared dead?" and "Should organs be transplanted?" The first question depends on the second question because if a person feels that organs shouldn't be transplanted, then the timing of death is a moot point.

Organs should be transplanted -- doing so is part of being human. Man is a tool user. He is the planet's best tool user. Progress is learning how to make and use new tools to benefit humanity and the planet. If someone says, "Don't use a tool because it isn't traditional," that person is denying part of our humanity.

Brain death is a question of life, and it is question of accepting progress as part of our humanity. Accepting brain death as another way of defining death will make us more human, not less.