Defining Death Anew: Reexamining the Twentieth-Century Brain Death Debates and the Uniform Determination of Death Act.

25 Veatch argued that social‐practical death should be defined as “the irreversible loss of that which is essentially significant to the nature of man” and that this “essentially significant” material was consciousness. 26 Thus, destruction of the neocortex, which was required for consciousness, should be the fundamental definition of death. 27 For Veatch, the social‐practical concept of death was paramount; biological death was significant only in that it resulted in irreversible loss of consciousness.

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