In the past, a person was considered dead when he or she stopped breathing and the heart ceased to beat. Today, however, medical technology is able to maintain the heartbeat and respiration in people who would otherwise be dead.
These developments have raised new questions about whether people have the right to control how they die, and even about when death itself may actually be said to occur. Furthermore, now that today`s advanced surgical procedures make it possible to transplant body parts such as kidneys, it is important to know at what point death really happens and organs can legitimately be removed for transplantation.
In 1968 a committee of the Harvard Medical School offered a definition of death based on the concept of brain death. A person would be considered dead if he or she was unreceptive and unresponsive; was in an irreversible coma; did not move or did not breathe when off a mechanical respirator; had no reflexes; and had a flat electroencephalogram (EEG), indicating no brain waves. That definition is now widely accepted medically, and a number of states have written it into law.
Reference :
Marvin R Levy, Mark Dignan, Janet H Shirreffs, Essentials of Life & Health, Fourth Edition, Random House, New York, 1984.
