Are Brain Dead Individuals Dead? Grounds for Reasonable Doubt

Abstract

According to the biological definition of death, a human body that has not lost the capacity to holistically organize itself is the body of a living human individual. Reasonable doubt against the conclusion that it has lost the capacity exists when the body appears to express it and no evidence to the contrary is sufficient to rule out reasonable doubt against the conclusion that the apparent expression is a true expression (i.e., when the conclusion that what appears to be holistic organization is in fact holistic organization remains a reasonable explanatory hypothesis in light of the best evidence to the contrary). This essay argues that the evidence and arguments against the conclusion that the signs of complex bodily integration exhibited in ventilated brain dead bodies are true expressions of somatic integration are unpersuasive; that is, they are not adequate to exclude reasonable doubt against the conclusion that BD bodies are dead. Since we should not treat as corpses what for all we know might be living human beings, it follows that we have an obligation to treat BD individuals as if they were living human beings.

Kontrafaktische Darstellung des Hirntod-Konzepts

“…Von "Offenkundigkeit" kann keine Rede sein. Gerade im anglo-amerikanischen Sprachraum unterliegt das "Hirntod-Kriterium" anhaltender Kritik [8,18,21,22].…”

Brain Death and the Dutch Organ Donation Law

“…It has become clear by now that it cannot be proven that the brain plays a decisive role in managing the vital functions of the human body. There are “grounds for reasonable doubt” (Brugger 2016). Important integral bodily functions, such as digestion and excretion, body temperature, wound healing, defense against infections, and cardiovascular and endocrine stress reactions, can operate independently, apart from the brain.…”

When are you dead enough to be a donor? Can any feasible protocol for the determination of death on circulatory criteria respect the dead donor rule?

“…The problem is not a matter of lacking knowledge, as the authors of the white paper and others suppose (e.g., [35, ch. 6; 36; 37). The reason for this supposition seems to be the idea that death is a biological event.…”

“…Even if this is correct (cf. [37]), it does not answer the question of why the higher level of organization is required to consider a human organism alive.…”