Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

IS THE BRAIN-DEAD PATIENT REALLY DEAD? 307vidual. In fact, from the systems perspective, after the cessationof respiration and circulation, none of a human being’s organs isvital. Thus, after systole, shouldn’t it now be morally permissiblefor the still living individual to donate his once but no longervital organs as a last act of charity before his death?ConclusionOrgan transplants are valuable. As the Pope pointed out inhis discourse to the International Congress of the TransplantSociety, not a few people today owe their lives to organ transplanttechnology. From a Christian perspective, however, thevalue of organ donation goes beyond its utility. Ultimately, itsvalue is grounded in the dignity of the human person who is ableto give of himself to another in a very concrete and tangible way.As John Paul II said: “Here precisely lies the nobility of the gesture[of organ donation], a gesture which is a genuine act oflove. It is not just a matter of giving away something thatbelongs to us but of giving something of ourselves, for ‘by virtueof its substantial union with a spiritual soul, the human bodycannot be considered as a mere complex of tissues, organs andfunctions … rather it is a constitutive part of the person whomanifests and expresses himself through it’.” 75 Only the humanperson, precisely because he is a person, is able to give himselfaway through organ donation. It is a privilege that comes withhuman dignity. However, it is also in the name of this samehuman dignity that the Catholic Church challenges the medicaland scientific communities to make sure that their definition ofdeath is consonant with an authentic anthropology. The medicalevidence and philosophical reflection upon that evidence nowsuggest that the TBD criteria proposed both by the Harvard AdHoc Committee and the President’s Commission do not in factcohere with a true anthropology. Thus the time has come for thecriteria to be replaced precisely to protect the dignity of the75Pope JOHN PAUL II, “Address,” p. 90 (Quoting Donum vitae,Introduction, no. 3).