Vinay Kumaran

The World Congress of Bioethics is being held in Bangalore next month. There is a pre-congress workshop for transplant coordinators where ethical issues related to brain death and organ donation are going to be discussed. One of the issues being discussed is how we define death. Before organ donation became an integral part of modern medicine, there was little discordance between the medical definition of death and the religious ones. If the heart stopped beating and the breathing stopped (usually in rapid succession), and if efforts to restart them failed then the person was declared dead. Religious leaders who defined death as the soul leaving the body were happy to confirm that the moment of the departure of the soul was when the heart stopped beating. It is still common for people who have recovered after a cardiac arrest to claim that they died and came back. Images created by disordered firing of neurons short of oxygen were interpreted according to the cultural norms of the s...

A common thread which runs through all religions is the denial of death. They all have some form of belief which permits a person to survive, typically in the form of a soul, after the death of the body. They believe that something continues after the body dies. Some religions have the concept of reincarnation. The soul returns in another body. Or if sufficiently enlightened, attains a state of permanent bliss referred to as 'Moksh'. Or becomes part of a 'universal soul' which permeates the universe. Many religions have a reward and punishment concept. The soul is judged by a God for thoughts, actions and intentions during life and receives either a reward by being allowed into Heaven, apparently a nice place to be, Valhalla, an everlasting party with like-minded friends or punishment in the form of confinement to Hell, an unpleasant place to be in, typically due to low or high temperatures without the option of appropriate clothes. There are variations such as spen...