1. See, e.g., Taylor, A Statutory Definition of Death in Kansas, 215 J.A.M.A. 296 (1971) Getter to the editor), in which the principal draftsman of the Kansas statute states that the law was believed necessary to protect transplant surgeons against the risk of “a criminal charge, for the existence of a resuscitated heart in another body should be excellent evidence that the donor was not dead [under the “definition” of death then existing in Kansas] until the operator excised the heart.” Cf.
2. Kapoor, Death & Problems of Transplant, 38 Man. B. News 167, 177 (1971).
3. Baker, Liability and the Heart Transplant, 6 Houston L. Rev. 85, 97-101 (1968). The specter of civil liability was raised in Tucker v. Lower, a recent action brought by the brother of a heart donor against the transplantation team at the Medical College of Virginia. See notes 42-50 infra & accompanying text.
4. Rutstein, The Ethical Design of Human Experiments, 98 Daedalus 523, 526 (1969). Leaders of the Netherlands Red Cross Society’s Organ Transplantation Committee argue that only “total absence of the brain’s functional capacity” and not “irreversible coma” indicates that death has occurred and state the Dutch position that the Harvard criteria “are grounds for stopping treatment and letting the patient die,” but not for declaring death. Rot & van Till, Neocortical Death after Cardiac Arrest, 2 Lancet 1099-1100 (1971) (letter to the editor).
5. See, e.g., Arnold, Zimmerman & Martin, Public Attitudes and the Diagnosis of Death, 206 J.A.M.A. 1949 (1968) [hereinafter cited as Arnold]