At Vatican meeting, experts debate if brain-dead means death

Published: 2005-02-04

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The practice of harvesting vital organs from patients determined to be brain-dead was called into question by a number of Catholic medical experts at a Vatican-sponsored meeting. Some critics of the procedure, which is legal in the United States and many European countries, cautioned that the complete cessation of brain activity might not indicate the actual death of the person. "Brain death is not death," said U.S. Dr. Paul Byrne, former president of the Catholic Medical Association. In a brain-dead patient, "the heart beats, the body is warm, vital organs like the liver and kidney are functioning and there is respiration, albeit supported" by a mechanical ventilator, he said during a Feb. 3-4 meeting sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Pope John Paul II called for the special meeting "in order to re-study the signs of death and verify at a purely scientific level the validity of the criterion of brain death," said the chancellor of the academy, Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo.

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