National Health and Medical Research Council. This definition applies to all states except Western Australia, which has no statutory definition of death.
Brain death (irreversible cessation of all function of the brain) means death of both the upper brain and brain stem. A person who is brain dead has lost both the capacity to think and perceive, as well as the control of basic body functions. Court challenges to consider upper brain death alone have so far failed, but history suggests that our current definition of death is far from permanent.
In the future it may be possible for individuals to define death for themselves by specifying under what circumstances they want to be considered dead. There is already provision for this in some countries.
For the Roman Catholic Church death is the "complete and final separation of the soul from the body". However the Vatican has conceded that diagnosing death is a subject for medicine, not the Church. In 1957 Pope Pius XII raised the concerns over whether doctors might be "continuing the resuscitation process, despite the fact that the soul may already have left the body." He even asked one of the central questions confronting modern medicine, namely whether "death had already occurred after grave trauma to the brain, which has provoked deep unconsciousness and central breathing paralysis, the fatal consequences of which have been retarded by artificial respiration." The answer, he said, "did not fall within the competence of the Church."
Pope Pius XII.
Followers of religions like Zen Buddhism, and Shintoism believe that the mind and body are integrated and have trouble accepting the brain death criteria to determine death. Some Orthodox Jews, Native Americans, Muslims and fundamentalist Christians believe that as long as a heart is beating--even artificially, you are still alive.
Copyright © Australian Museum, 2008
