A philosophical assessment of TK's autopsy report: Implications for the debate over the brain death criteria.

Abstract

Traditionally, the presence or absence of bodily integration has been used to definitively discern the presence or absence of life in the human being where decomposition of the body is the surest sign of death. The autopsy report of a patient named TK who was brain-dead for nearly twenty years demonstrates that brain-dead patients retain their bodily integrity. As such, TK and other brain-dead patients are not dead. They are living, though severely disabled, human organisms, who are human persons made in the image and likeness of God.