Brain Death is Not Death: A Critique of the Concept, Criterion, and Tests of Brain Death

Abstract

This paper suggests that there are insurmountable problems for brain death as a criterion of death. The following are argued: (1) brain death does not meet an accepted concept of death, and is not the loss of integration of the organism as a whole; (2) brain death does not meet the criterion of brain death itself; brain death is not the irreversible loss of all critical functions of the entire brain; and (3) brain death may, however rarely, be reversible. I conclude that brain death, while a devastating neurological state with a dismal prognosis, is not death.