Defining Death: A New Legal Perspective

by Sigrid Fry-Revere, Reher Thomas, Ray Matthew

There is no unifying scientific means to define the moment of death, only a legal one. We all know when someone is dead, but what we experience as death is long after that person was "legally" dead. Is it when the heart stops? When the lungs cease, even if the heart continues to beat? Is it when higher brain functions are gone? When basic brain functions are gone? Or, all of the above? Defining death, the ramifications of who decides, and under what circumstances someone is pronounced dead have huge ramifications in fields such as emergency and transplant medicine. This book explores these questions and suggests some possible answers for dealing with a value-laden and difficult, but important, subject. This book was originally published as an article in the Journal of Contemporary Health Law & Policy under the title " A New Legal Perspective."

84 pages, Paperback

First published April 3, 2014

About the author

Travel and discovery is in my blood. By the time I was nine, I have visited over 30 countries and lived in six. I didn't settle down and start to learn to read and write English until I was ten. I never traveled that much again.

Instead I went to college, married, bought a small farm, and had four children. After moving around my whole childhood, it felt good to have a stable home base. My husband Bob and I have lived outside of Waterford Virginia for over 22 years.

Despite all my exposure to different cultures, I was terrified of the thought of going to Iran, but I was driven by the thought that there may be something there -- something hidden because I wasn't the only one afraid to go-- what if Iran held the answer to solving the organ shortage.

I went and saw amazing things, much of which I captured on tape, but that was only the beginning of a long struggle I didn't expect. Many Americans don't want to hear anything good about Iran. I would say that not everything I experienced was good -- but still, when I said "Iran" many people simply turned away and refused to listen. This, attitude, by the way, is called the fallacy of generalization: Just because the Iranian government has done many bad things, doesn't mean everything it does is bad.

I wanted to shout -- Listen, Listen -- we could learn something from Iran. Not many people listened. Luckily, in the six years since I've returned from Iran, other countries like Israel, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia have started to institute programs with some similarity to what Iran has done (namely paying kidney donors) so people are starting to listen. In the meantime 20-30 Americans die every day for lack of a transplant, but in many regions of Iran there are waiting lists for people who want to donate.

I first thought about the organ shortage 24 years ago when my son had kidney cancer, but now, finally, after all this time, I might actually have some answers. I so want to share the amazing stories of the people I met in Iran, and help people understand that donating a kidney whether for money, or not, is always a good deed -- as long as the donor gives informed consent, paying to make a good deed possible is itself a good deed. Society started paying firefighters because there weren't enough volunteer firefighters. Does paying a firefighter in any way make his or her service to society less valuable? The same is true for kidney donors. Sometimes money makes altruism possible.

If this topic interests you, please see http://www.stoporgantrafffickingnow.org