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Abstract

Contemporary intensive care unit (ICU) medicine has complicated the issue of what constitutes death in a life support environment. Not only is the distinction between sapient life and prolongation of vital signs blurred but the concept of death itself has been made more complex. The demand for organs to facilitate transplantation promotes a strong incentive to define clinical death in a manner that most effectively supplies that demand. We consider the problem of defining death in the ICU as a function of viable organ availability for transplantation

Bioethicists must rethink the concept of death: the idea of brain death is not appropriate for cryopreservation

“…However, the process of bringing a person or animal from a state of cryopreservation to life is called resuscitation, a term that is used among cryonicists. The term “revival” may be more appropriate than “resuscitation” ( 3 ).…”

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“…Therefore, we cannot necessarily know the precise point at which integration springs from cellular function. As Michael Darwin and colleagues [ 8 ] have written, "It is only the ideologue or the fool who acknowledges noon and midnight, but denies all the states of light and darkness that smoothly shade together to create day and night."…”