Brains and Persons: A Critique of Veatch’s View

Abstract

Professor Veatch’s continuing argument with the President’s Commission’s recommendation of a “wholebrain” definition of death is important and bears brief rehearsal. As he pointed out, the Commission committed two basic errors. First, it mistakenly rejected the most plausible conception of death — that oriented toward the “higher brain functions” — in favor of a fundamentally “animalistic” view which gives “highest priority to the capacity to integrate bodily functions” ([6], p. 183), which is what the “whole-brain” definition really comes down to in the end.