ESSENTIALIST VS BIOLOGICAL DEFINITION OF BRAIN DEATH

DE ORTÚZAR, M. G

Bs As

Congreso; XVI World Congress of Neourology; 1997

Sociedad Internacional de Neurología et al

                  In the intensive care age the subject of death has acquered a new interest. Today, it is possible to resucitate patiens that have lost the adequate cardiac function and preserve for years patients with complete destruction of the neocortical functions (patients in vegetative state, PVS). Conceptual and ethical problems arise in medicine as a result of medicine’s technologicalization. Some philosophers such Daniel Wikler and Michael Green then expressed the necessity of redefining death, considering the loss of the personal identity continuity to be the authentic reasons to justify a new definition of death (“essentialist perspective”). Others philosophers like Bernard Gert  hold that the definition of death it is supported by the biological sense of death present in our ordinary use of the word (“biological perspective”).               In this paper we will focus in the analysis and criticism of the essentialist definition of death and finally we will make a defense of the biological perspective: the death of the organism as a whole.