Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

284 NICANOR AUSTRIACOover BD. In its published report, the Committee noted that therewere two reasons why there was a need for a new definition fordeath:1. Improvements in resuscitative and supportive measures haveled to increased efforts to save those who are desperatelyinjured. Sometimes these efforts have only partial success sothat the result is an individual whose heart continues to beatbut whose brain is irreversibly damaged. The burden is greaton patients who suffer permanent loss of intellect, on theirfamilies, on the hospitals, and on those in need of hospitalbeds already occupied by these comatose patients.2. Obsolete criteria for the definition of death can lead to controversyin obtaining organs for transplantation. 16One way to read this is that the Committee sought to redefinedeath because of two independent reasons: the increasing use ofrespirators and the need to protect physicians who do organtransplants. However, one could also link the two and argue thatthe Committee claimed that there was a need to redefine deathbecause there were a lot of brain dead patients on respiratorsand the need for their organs was great. As Peter Singer haspointed out, this interpretation can claim much support foritself. In fact, the utilitarian presuppositions behind the Ad HocCommittee’s intentions were actually softened in the final reportsince an earlier draft stated that one reason for changing the definitionof death was the “great need for tissues and organs of,among others, the patient whose cerebrum has been hopelesslydestroyed, in order to restore those who are salvageable.” 17Another commentator has noted that it was not a coincidencethat the Ad Hoc Committee’s report on the brain-based criteria16Ad Hoc Committee, “Definition,” p. 85.17Peter SINGER, “Is the Sanctity of Life Ethic Terminally Ill?” Bioethics 9(1995): 307-43. Reprinted in Bioethics: An Anthology ed. Helga Kuhse andPeter Singer (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), pp. 292-301, p. 294. Citingthe earlier draft of the Harvard Ad Hoc Committee’s report quoted in DavidROTHMAN, Strangers at the Bedside (New York: Basic Books, 1991), pp. 162-4.