This publication begins with the ‘Letter of His Holiness Benedict XVI to Our Venerable Brother Msgr. Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on the
In debates about criteria for human death, several camps have emerged, the main two focusing on either loss of the "organism as a whole" (the mainstream view) or loss of consciousn
Debate over the past five years between holders of concepts of death which focus on the brain and those who focus on the more traditional heart and lungs has created a situation wh
Few philosophical questions have as much practical import as how to understand the nature of organismic death (hereafter, “death” see Death).Dead human beings, for example, are bel
The most fundamental philosophical question about death is the question concerning its nature or essence – ‘What is death?’. When philosophers offer answers to this question, they
In recent years, there has been increasing evidence that the totally brain-dead patient is able to continue to live and to maintain some integrated functions, albeit with the neces
Our Judeo-Christian heritage celebrates life as the gift of a loving God, and respects the life of each human being because each is made in the image and likeness of God.
In economic matters, respect for human dignity requires the practice of the virtue of temperance, so as to moderate attachment to this world's goods; the practice of the virtue of
The traditional criteria of human death were rigor mortis and decomposition, then irreversible cardiorespiratory arrest (cessation of heart beat and breathing), and more recently (since the development beginning in the 1960s of heart and other vital organ transplantation) cessation of neurological activity. The last of these ‘brain death’ came to prominence following the 1968 Harvard Medical School proposal to define human death as ‘irreversible coma’. Ordinarily these three kinds of criteria coincide or are closely associated but developments in medical technology, such as artificial respiration have tended to separate the second and third leading to debates as to whether someone who is breathing but lacks upper brain function is actually dead. More recently there have been attempts to weave criteria together as incomplete parts or a complete and clinically usable criterion of death.