Since the 1960s, organ procurement policies have relied on the boundary of death-advertised as though it were a factual, value-free, and unobjectionable event-to foster organ donation while minimizing controversy. Death determination, however, involves both discoveries of facts and events and decisions about their meaning (whether the facts and events are relevant to establish a vital status), the latter being subjected to legitimate disagreements requiring deliberation. By revisiting the historical origin of the dead donor rule, including some events that took place in France prior to the report by the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death, I want to recall that those who first promoted the DDR did not take into account any scientific rationale to support the new proposed criteria to determine death. Rather, through a process of factual re-semantization, they authorized themselves to decide about the meaning of death in order to implicitly prioritize the interests of organ recipients over those of dying people.
© 2018 The Hastings Center.