From ancient time declaration of death has been based upon the traditional cessation of carcardiorespiratory activity.
However the development of respiratory and cardiac resuscitation measures in the middle of the twentieth century literally restored life to the heart and lungs, but might leave more sensitive organ such as the brain in a non-functional state. And
so a
person incapable of breathing and without ability to respond may, by reason of a mechanical respiratior, have a beating heart. But is that individual alive? His breathing and cardiac action will cease eventually in a few days.
Since physicians have introduced a new concept of death based upon the demonstration of a permanently non-functional brain in the past 30 years, the brain death has been socially ad legally accepted as the basis for the pronouncement of the death
in
many countries of the Europe and the America, and a few of the Asia.
Although loss of cardiorespiratory activity is generally the basis for the pronouncement o death in Korea, there is a growing interest in the thesis that the master organ, the brain, no longer functions, life is at an end.
The author discusses the changing concept of death and presents the newer criteria for the determination of a dead brain established in the Korean Medical Association in March 1989.
The concept of brain death might be better accepted as the basis of individual death soon in Korea.
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