Vatican paper queries brain death

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/world/europe/7596522.stm

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An editorial in a Vatican-linked newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, has called into question the concept of brain death.

For decades, the Roman Catholic church accepted that when all brain functions cease a person can be declared dead.

However, the current editorial argues that new scientific advances mean it needs to be re-examined.

In 1968 a Harvard Medical School report proposed a definition of death based on the end of all cerebral activity.

The proposal - which gained global acceptance - shifted the definition of death from one based on cardiac arrest, as the heart can be kept beating artificially.

Cases quoted

But now, in an editorial in the newspaper, history professor Lucetta Scaraffia quotes cases where pregnant mothers, declared brain-dead, have been kept alive until the baby can be born.

She said this challenged the idea that these brain-dead bodies were already corpses from which organs could be transplanted.

She said the Vatican had accepted the definition of brain death with many reservations, and that it was not used within the Vatican city state.

Medical associations in Italy have defended brain death as the best criterion available.

The head of the Vatican press office said the editorial was an interesting contribution to the debate, but was not the position of the Catholic Church.