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Dear Maureen,
Brain death is a short-hand way of saying that someone has been declared
dead using neurological criteria instead of cardio-pulmonary criteria.
Throughout most of history and in most places in the world, when someone stops breathing
(pulmonary) and the heart stops beating (cardio), he or she is declared dead.
However,
there are now machines that will keep a heart beating and force oxygen into lungs
after a person has died to keep those organs alive. There are very strict and thorough
tests that determine whether or not the brain has died. These criteria
are actually more rigorous than the cardio-pulmonary criteria. A person was declared dead
when the breathing and heart beating stopped because oxygen would no longer get to
the brain and the brain would die. Once the brain was dead, there was absolutely
no hope for recovery. Now, they can determine that a person has died even though the
heart and lungs will be kept going for a short time using machines.
In August 2000, Pope John Paul II addressed a group of doctors involved in organ transplantation
and said that it was morally OK to use neurological criteria to determine
someone to be dead before removing organs for transplantation. In other words, a
doctor can remove organs for transplantation after one has been declared brain
dead. There are not two different ways of being dead. There are two different ways of determining that a person has died:
- cardio-pulmonary and
- neurological (brain
death) criteria.
Therefore, it is impossible to commit euthanasia on someone who is brain dead because
you cannot kill someone who is already dead! If you want to read the Pope's words
and our commentaries, you can go to our web site: www.ncbcenter.org.
Sincerely,
John M. Haas, Ph.D., S.T.L.
President
The National Catholic Bioethics Center
https://www.ncbcenter.org
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