![Despite the clarion call 27 years ago to stop harvesting organs from brain-dead patients, organ donation and transplantation practices have remained essentially unchanged. Despite the clarion call 27 years ago to stop harvesting organs from brain-dead patients, organ donation and transplantation practices have remained essentially unchanged.](https://publisher-ncreg.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/pb-ncregister/swp/hv9hms/media/20240429140416_0de5e77e62d61d56aa15e8e360d71e0942fc0aeedbc80e9e54247b9093fee602.jpg)
Opinion: Catholics Should Not Be ‘Brain Death’ Organ Donors
COMMENTARY: The April 11 statement by The National Catholic Bioethics Center affirms that ‘a partial brain death standard can never be acceptable to Catholics.’
COMMENTARY: The April 11 statement by The National Catholic Bioethics Center affirms that ‘a partial brain death standard can never be acceptable to Catholics.’
COMMENTARY: The debate over brain death has no easy answer but requires astute attentiveness to science, Church teaching and the sanctity of human life.
COMMENTARY: It is vitally important for scholars to continue deliberating the validity of the neurological criterion to inform the Catholic magisterium’s discernment of whether what they learn of brain death continues to cohere with the Church’s traditional understanding of the nature of the human person.
COMMENTARY: Medical knowledge advances and our laws must change accordingly.
COMMENTARY: People of good will in and out of the medical community should support medical research seeking innovative, morally uncontentious ways to replace failing organs.
Catholic doctors and ethicists today largely echo St. John Paul II in stating that brain death, when properly diagnosed, is not a “kind” of death; it is simply death, period.
An estimated 42 people are declared brain dead throughout the U.S. every day.
The teen defied the medical definition of brain death, and her family’s fight to spare her life has fueled other challenges to this complicated medical diagnosis.
DIFFICULT MORAL QUESTIONS: The case of Trenton McKinley has renewed discussion and doubts about whether brain death constitutes actual death.
New court documents fuel controversy around the 15-year-old who has launched the accepted definition of ‘brain death’ into a tailspin.
Subscriber Service CenterAlready a subscriber? Renew or manage your subscription here.
Subscribe and Save HALF OFF!Start your Register subscription today.
Subscribe NowGive a Gift SubscriptionBless friends, family or clergy with a gift of the Register.
Order NowOrder Bulk SubscriptionsGet a discount on 6 or more copies sent to your parish, organization or school.
Order NowSign-up for E-NewsletterGet Register Updates sent daily or weeklyto your inbox.
Sign Up