ABSTRACT
The public policy discussion of the definition of death began in earnest in the late 1960s. It began in the context of a world that in that same decade had seen the first successful transplantation of an organ from one human being to another, including the first transplant of the human heart in December 1967. Social and cultural changes take place when someone is labeled dead. Some medical treatments may be stopped when an individual is considered dead that would not be stopped if the individual were alive—even if he or she were terminally ill. This of course does not imply that there are treatments that should not be stopped at other times, either before or after the time somebody is labeled dead. In many cases, the public’s fascination with the definition of death discussion may be misplaced. The human organism operates at many levels, including cellular and supercellular levels of organization.
