Defining Death: Lessons From the Case of Jahi McMath

Abstract

Death is defined biologically as the irreversible loss of the functioning of the organism as a whole, which typically occurs after the loss of cardiorespiratory function. In 1968, a Harvard committee proposed that death could also be defined neurologically as the irreversible loss of brain function. Brain death has been considered to be equivalent to cardiorespiratory arrest on the basis of the belief that the brain is required to maintain functioning of the organism as a whole and that without the brain, cardiorespiratory arrest and biological death are both rapid and certain. Over the past 20 years, however, this equivalence has been shown to be false on the basis of numerous cases of patients correctly diagnosed as brain-dead who nevertheless continued to survive for many years. The issue reached national attention with the case of Jahi McMath, a young woman diagnosed as brain-dead after a surgical accident, who survived for almost 5 years, mostly at home, supported with a ventilator and tube feedings. The fact that brain death is not biological death has many implications, notably including the concern that procurement of organs from brain-dead donors may not comply with the so-called dead donor rule, which requires that vital organs be procured from patients only after they are dead. In this article, I conclude with an analysis of options for moving forward and among them advocate for reframing brain death as a “social construct,” with implicit societal acceptance that patients diagnosed as brain-dead may be treated legally and ethically the same as if they were biologically dead.