The nature of brain death from the viewpoint of Quran and Hadith

Today, medicine regards brain death as absolute death; a fact that its acceptance, especially by those who are emotionally connected with the patients with a beating heart and a normal face while he is breathing and seems to be fast asleep, is very difficult. Some religious leaders do not view this state as absolute death and do not relate it to death. Consideration of this issue is of great importance in legal, political, social, ethical, philosophical, and medical debates and several international conferences have been held on this controversial issue. There are different stances and viewpoints with regard to the nature of brain death. It goes without saying that if brain death is not regarded as absolute death, organ transplantation from patients with brain death who are a great source of organ provision will face major difficulties. By dividing life into such stages as complete physical life, constant vegetative life, singular organ life, and cellular life and elaborating on each stage, such conclusion can be reached that death occurs in three stages: 1) Cardiac and pulmonary death, 2)death of brain cells minutes after deoxygenation, and 3) death of body cells which differs from organ death. Such an order exists in natural death but in brain death, death starts from the second stage and eventually leads to the death of cells. There are, however, stages akin to deep coma. This study, in addition to explaining brain death and its differences with deep coma and other similar states, comes to the conclusion that brain death is equal to absolute death and can be treated as real death. This study investigates brain death in medicine by taking such concepts as sleep, coma, vegetable life, and cardiac death into consideration. Then it deals with the relationship between sleep and death as well as the reality of death so as to provide ample evidence for realization of death in the view of religion and compare it with the medical concept of death. According to this hypothesis, brain death is equal to absolute death. This study is a descriptive-analytical review of internet databases and library resources.