Historically the definition of “dead” was important to make certain no one was buried alive. Today it’s important because transplant surgeons need to know when they can take your organs. A recent Washington Post article explores the difficulties of defining death. In the Death & Dying course I teach at Arapahoe Community College I ask the students to write down their definition of death on the first day of class. I save the cards and then on the last day of class ask them to write down their definition of death. Rarely does their definition remain the same. Why, because it’s not an easy thing to define. As we gain more knowledge about the subject we can’t but help morph our own definition. Our society can’t agree when a life begins, so why would it be able to agree with a death occurs?

Article author, William Saletan asks, “How can we get more organs? By redefining death.” At the Children’s Hospital in Denver hearts are taken 75 seconds after death because a heart has never self-started after 60 seconds. But the question is, are the docs at Children’s being hasty, or are the docs who wait two to five minutes too slow? If every second counts why wouldn’t we take the organs after 61 seconds? The key word there is self-start. Hearts have been restarted by external stimulation after several minutes. The important thing to note though is that the parents have decided that they didn’t want any type of resuscitation. Letting the family decide somewhat takes the doctor off the hook, but it can’t be easy for them either. Knowing when to give up on one patient and re-invest in another sounds like a brutal job.

Today death is what you say it is; brain death, heart death, or a persistent vegetative state. The problem is that not too far down the road we will have more medical advancements changing the definition of death yet again. Right now however, the definition of death benefits organ donation.