ABA Family Legal Guide

Health-Care Law

Specific Issues in Health Care

Organ Donation

When are you dead?

Sounds like a silly question, doesn't it? Medical technology is advancing at breakneck speed, and "death" is being redefined. Death used to occur when your heart stopped beating. Then artificial life support was developed for people with severe brain injuries. Suddenly there was a new form of death—brain death. Doctors and hospitals were afraid to stop treatment on a brain-dead person because that person's heart was still beating with the help of artificial life support.

In a brain-dead patient, brain function has stopped, including that which controls breathing and heart activity. All circulatory and respiratory functions are maintained by artificial life support. In essence, being brain dead is the same as being "dead."

In 1980, death received a new definition. You are dead either when your circulatory and respiratory functions stop for good, or when your entire brain, including the brain stem, irreversibly stops functioning. Most states legally define death in this way. If you are an organ donor, circulatory and respiratory functions will be kept going by artificial life support if you are brain dead to preserve your organs until they can be harvested for transplantation.