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The brain death debate is now 30 years old. Ever since the Harvard Ad Hoc criteria for brain death were published in August 1968, and the proposal was first made that the clinical diagnosis of brain death constituted the legal death of a human being (brain death as death), the brain death controversy has continued.1 However, except for a few unresolved issues, there has been a surprising degree of consensus on the major medical and legal aspects of this subject. One reason for this consensus has been the numerous sets of clinical criteria published by medical, pediatric, neurologic, and neurosurgical organizations in the United States and other countries. Even though these criteria varied somewhat in the clinical features essential to the diagnosis of brain death, the positions of these medical societies strongly supported the view that brain death was a highly reliable diagnosis in most cases.2 In the 1970s, when lawmakers were first involved in enacting statutory legislation equating brain death with death, they were informed by physicians that brain death was a medical syndrome that could be …
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