The Doctors Trying to Redefine Death

In the old days, a person was considered dead when the heart stopped. Then, in 1968, a group of Harvard professors decided that people could also be considered dead when the brain stopped. Now, three doctors from New York are advocating that we expand the definition of death to include what they call “irreversibly comatose patients on life support.”

What does this mean? And what’s with the drive to label more people deceased ?

Perhaps this sounds like an academic concern—the kind of subject reserved for philosophers and priests or even medical ethicists like me. But don’t be fooled. This is a profoundly relevant debate for anyone with a healthy kidney, heart, lung, or liver that could be transplanted to save the life of someone else. In other words, the question of when a person