An Alternative to Brain Death

Bernat J. L. , “A Defense of the Whole-Brain Concept of Death,” Hastings Center Report 28, no. 2 (1998): 14–23, at 17. 2. See Bernat J. L. , “Defending Challenges to the Concept of ‘Brain Death,’” at <http://www.lahey.org/NewsPubs/Publications/Ethics/JournalFall1998/Journal_Fall1998_Feature.asp> (last visited December 5, 2005); and DeVita M. A. and Arnold R. M. , “The Concept of Brain Death,” at <http://www.lahey.org/NewsPubs/Publications/Ethics/JournalWinter1999/Journal_Winter1999_Dialogue.asp> (last visited December 5, 2005).

For an early suggestion of this sort, see Green M. B. and Wikler D. , “Brain Death and Personal Identity,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 9 (1980): 105–33, at 113.

Bernat , supra note 1, at 19.

Bernat also claims that “consciousness, which is required for the organism to respond to requirements for hydration, nutrition, and protection, among other needs,” is therefore among the “critical functions of the organism as a whole.” Ibid., at 17. But this still does not make it a somatic regulatory function of the brain.

See, for example, Shewmon A. , “Recovery from ‘Brain Death’: A Neurologist's Apologia,” Linacre Quarterly 64 (1997): 30–96; Shewmon A. , “Chronic ‘Brain Death,’” Neurology 51 (1998): 1538–45; and Shewmon A. , “The Disintegration of Somatic Integrative Unity: Demise of the Orthodox but Physiologically Untenable Physiological Rationale for ‘Brain Death,’” manuscript on file with the author.

Bernat , supra note 2.

See McMahan J. , The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (New York: Oxford University Press: 2002): Chapter 5, section 1.2.

For further argument, see McMahan , supra note 8, at 7–24.