I ca 40 år har «alle» godtatt hjernedødkriteriet, dvs. at man kan bli erklært død selv om hjertet fortsatt slår. Bl.a. for organdonasjon har dette vært viktig, fordi organene da kan tas svært tidlig. Nå ser det ut som at noen katolikker stiller spørsmåltegn med dette, og ønsker å gå tilbake til det gamle dødskriteriet; at hjertet slutter å slå.
I alle fall var det en artikkel i Vatikanets egen avis L’Osservatore Romano, som tok til orde for dette:
The pope’s newspaper has called into question whether cessation of brain activity is enough to certify a death. And with this, it has reopened the discussion on taking organs from «warm cadavers» while the heart is still beating. The scholars of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences are even more critical. …
Beneath the surface, however, doubts are growing in the Church. From Pius XII on, the pronouncements of the hierarchy on this question have been less clear-cut than they appear. This «ambiguity» of the Church is illustrated in an entire chapter of a book published recently in Italy: «Brain death and organ transplant. A question of legal ethics,» published by Morcelliana in Brescia. The author is Paolo Becchi, professor of the philosophy of law at the universities of Genoa and Luzern, and a pupil of a Jewish thinker who dedicated concerned reflections to the question of the end of life, Hans Jonas. According to Jonas, the new definition of death established by the Harvard report was not motivated by any real scientific advancement, but rather by interests, by the need for organs for transplants.
But it is especially in the Church that critical voices are gaining strength. Since 1989, when the Pontifical Academy of Sciences took up the question, Professor Josef Seifert, rector of the International Philosophical Academy of Liechtenstein, advanced strong objections to the definition of brain death. At that conference, Seifert’s was the only dissenting voice. But years later, when from January 3-4, 2005, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences again met to discuss the question of the «signs of death,» the positions had been reversed. The experts present – philosophers, jurists, neurologists from various countries – found themselves in agreement in maintaining that brain death is not the death of a human being, and that the criterion of brain death, not being scientifically credible, should be abandoned.