Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

IS THE BRAIN-DEAD PATIENT REALLY DEAD? 285followed shortly after Christiaan Barnard’s pioneering hearttransplant: “A new standard of death was needed to determinewhen organs could be removed from a still “living” body.” 18Though some have disputed the role of organ transplantation inshaping the Harvard criteria, the link seems clear. Significantly,this was how the Harvard report was presented to the public: All17 New York Times articles on the issue of BD from 1967 to 1970and 9 of 14 such articles from 1971 to 1974 attributed the needto redefine death primarily to transplantation. 19 In fact, some ofthe media presented the BD criteria as one way to protect thepatient from unscrupulous doctors who were eager to harvestorgans from dying individuals. 20 Nevertheless, as Peter Singerrightly notes, the Harvard Ad Hoc Committee proposal markeda fundamental shift in our understanding of life and death. Wecould now take “warm pulsating human beings,” declare themdead, and even cut out “their hearts and other organs” for transplantationpurposes. 21The next major milestone in the history of the redefinitionof death was the publication, in 1981, of the recommendationsof the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problemsin Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research. TheCommission had been mandated by President Carter to study“the ethical and legal implications of the matter of definingdeath, including the advisability of developing a uniform definitionof death.” 22 In its conclusions, the Commission articulateda formulation of brain death that has come to be known as the“whole-brain standard” or “total brain death.” 23 It also proposeda model statute for brain death, the Uniform Determination of18Gregory E. PENCE, Classic Cases in Medical Ethics 2 nd edn. (New York:McGraw Hill, 1995), p. 21.19PERNICK, “Brain Death,” p. 11.20Ibid., p. 1621Peter SINGER, Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our TraditionalEthics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), p. 22.22President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems inMedicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, Defining Death(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1981), p. 1.23Ibid., pp. 1-2.