ABSTRACT
A remarkable consensus, bordering on unanimity, exists among the world's medical and legal experts on the definition of death. It says that death, in man, consists of the irreversible loss of functioning in the brain as a whole. According to this definition, even a patient with a beating heart may be pronounced dead; and, as a result, all medical care may be withdrawn, or vital organs removed for transplantation. This view has been endorsed by leading medical, legal, and governmental authorities in all but a few countries around the world. Though a few holdouts remain, the definition of death as death of the brain as a whole is widely regarded as a settled matter. It is a point of pride to bioethicists, who are vulnerable to the charge that they offer arguments but not solutions; for here is a once-controversial issue settled, seemingly once and for all, with hardly any dissent.
