Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

277StMor 41 (2003) 277-308NICANOR AUSTRIACOIS THE BRAIN-DEAD PATIENT REALLY DEAD?IntroductionOn August 29, 2000, Pope John Paul II addressed the 18 thInternational Congress of the Transplantation Society that wasbeing held in Rome. 1 His brief discourse to that meeting ofphysicians was significant because it was the first explicit statementby a pope regarding the diagnosis of death by neurologicalcriteria. It was hailed by many as the long-awaited Magisterialpronouncement on the brain death (BD) controversy that hasdivided moralists, physicians and lawyers both within theCatholic Church and within society at large, vindicating the prevailingopinion that death of the whole brain (also called totalbrain death, TBD) is an adequate definition for the death of thehuman being. 2 This interpretation of the Pope’s statement, however,has not gone unchallenged. 3 The heated debate continuestoday.In a recent issue of the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly,Dr. Edward J. Furton of the National Catholic Bioethics Center1Pope JOHN PAUL II, Address to the 18 th International Congress of theTransplantation Society, (August 29, 2000)” National Catholic BioethicsQuarterly 1 (2001): 89-92.2For instance, Edward J. FURTON calls the papal discourse a “watershedevent” in the Catholic Church’s understanding of brain death. See his “AComment on the Papal Statement: Clear Direction on the Question of BrainDeath,” Ethics and Medics 25 (2000): 2.3For instance, see Fabian BRUSKEWITZ, Robert VASA, Walt F. WEAVER, PaulA. BYRNE, Richard G. NILGES and Josef SEIFERT, “Are Organ Transplants EverMorally Licit?” The Catholic World Report March 2001, pp. 50-56. A critiqueof this essay has been published by Theodore I. STEINMAN, “A DangerousArgument against Organ Donation,” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 2(2002): 473-478. Also see the exchange of letters in the colloquy section of theNational Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 3 (2003): 9-12.