JOSEPH VENTURINI
graduated rom Notre Dame in 2009 with adual degree in the Program o Liberal Studies and Pre-proessionalStudies. He is currently a medical student at the Loyola University o Chicago’s Stritch School o Medicine. He developed an interestin philosophy during his years in the Great Books program at NotreDame. Tis paper is his senior essay. Joe sees medical ethics as theoverlap between his liberal studies background and his medical edu-cation. He would like to thank Bernd Goehring, his advisor, or hisindispensible guidance.
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Redefining Death:An Argument for a Person-Based Criteria
JOSEPH VENTURINI
Clearly, then, it is the easiest o all things to demolish a defnition,while to establish one is the hardest.– Aristotle,
opics
1
Introduction
In the middle o the twentieth century, the denition o deathchanged or the rst time in millennia. An individual was now con-sidered dead when her brain was dead—even i her heart was stillbeating. Tis new denition changed the way physicians, clergy, andlay-people thought about the end o lie. Tis paper chronicles theacceptance o total-brain death as a legal denition in the UnitedStates and questions whether urther modication o the denitiono death is necessary. Specically, this paper attempts to outline therelationship between lie and personhood in an attempt to inormthe way we dene death where our current denition is lacking.I propose higher-brain death as an alternative denition o deathin the United States and assess the ethical implications o such adenition.
Part 1: A Brief History of Death in the Western World
1.1 Death in the Enlightenment
In the eighteenth century, diagnosis o death was relatively simple. When a person became unconscious, a physician (usually) would eel or a pulse, listen or breathing, and determine i the in-dividual’s pupils were xed. Despite these basic measures, however,disagreement about a denition o death persisted. Some writings
journal of undergraduate research
97
rom the time describe dead persons awakening during unerals andexhumed bodies ound to have clawed at their co n lids.
2
In an e-ort to prevent premature burials, many Enlightenment physiciansproposed putreaction (decomposition) as the only reliable sign o death. Tis method worked, but it created signicant public healthissues or the surrounding community. As the Enlightenment came to a close, medical expertise becamemore common and eective. Te invention o the stethoscope in1816 made it easier or physicians to identiy normal and abnormalheart-sounds, which they quickly began to associate with certainmedical problems.
3
Tis new ability—as well as the advancement o pathology and other research initiatives—allowed the medical eldto gain signicant insight into the nature o disease and death.
1.2 Te riangle o Lie: the Brain, Heart, and Lungs
In 1800, Marie François Xavier Bichat, a renowned French phys-iologist, published his
Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort (Physiological research on lie and death)
. Medical historian ElizabethHaigh considers the work a synthesis o nearly all the importantmedical concepts that had evolved in the eighteenth century; she be-lieves the book is an appropriate indicator o contemporary medicalthought.
4
Bichat, the ounder o Doctor Larivière’s surgical school,opened his study with the assertion: “Lie consists in the sum o theunctions which resist death.”
6
Bichat then identied two separatelives that made up an individual:
animal
and
organic
. For Bichat,organic lie was the essential aspect o lie held in common by allliving things.
7
In humans, or example, organic unctions were thehomeostatic and autonomic unctions, such as respiration, circula-tion, and metabolism. By contrast, animal lie was the irregular, ra-tional, and habitual lie.
8
Bichat believed that the organic lie beganat conception; and that animal lie began at birth and was the rst toleave the body at death. Tese organic and animal lives were distinctthroughout the lie o the body. “While the organic lie may exist
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Redefining Death: An Argument for Person-Based Criteria
by Joseph Venturini
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