X-Message-Number: 1266 Date: Sat, 3 Oct 92 00:59:54 CDT From: Brian Wowk <> Subject: CRYONICS: Brain Death; Legal Death in the UK Tim Freeman: > read the sci.cryonics FAQ in the UK, and he > says that the criterion for legal death in the UK has something to do > with "brain death". Does anyone have a definition for "brain death" > they are reasonably sure of, and do any of the UK cryonics supporters > know how legal death is determined there? Any responses will probably > be put into the FAQ. In most jurisdictions in the modern world, legal death is defined as "irreversible cessation of vital functions (heartbeat and breathing)" OR "irreversible cessation of electrical activity in the brain stem." This means that if a person's heart stops, and you can't restart it (or if a Do Not Resuscitate order says it shouldn't be restarted), that patient can be declared legally dead on the spot. These are the circumstances under which most cryonic suspensions are performed: the *heart* has been stopped for only a couple of minutes, and the brain is still in reasonably good shape. The "brain death" criterion only comes into effect in special cases where the brain is severely injured, and vital functions (hearbeat and breathing) are being maintained by a respirator. If in these cases the brain stem does not recover function after a certain length of time, the patient will be declared "brain dead", and removed from the respirator. This scenario is indeed a disaster for a cryonics patient. Fortunately it is rare. To summarize, legal death can typically be pronounced as soon as the heart stops. I'm not aware of any jurisdiction that insists a patient in cardiac arrest must suffer some minimum amount of brain damge before legal death can be pronounced. I'd be surprised if the UK was an exception. --- Brian Wowk Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1266