La morte cerebrale in Giappone: tra istituzioni giuridiche e pratica clinica

Abstract

In Japan, the redefinition of human death on neurological criteria in relation to organ transplantation has been at the centre of a heated and long-lasting debate (Lock 2002). The legacy of such controversy is that Japan is among the few countries that do not define brain death as a uniform criterion of human death, and to date it ranks at the very bottom of international statistics on cadaveric organ procurement. In the article, I examine the Japanese policy on organ donation from an anthropological point of view, and drawing on qualitative interviews with intensive care physicians and neurosurgeons I explore the meanings and practices of the clinical diagnosis of brain death. Through this analysis, I tease out the practices through which the shifting meanings and ontologies of the body, as a dying person and an object of donation, are negotiated and brought to life. The Japanese case, I submit, offers a relevant contribution to the on-going debate on brain death, which has often remained limited to a merely speculative critique, in that it provides original insights into the practical implications of this clinical category in relation to both the problem of end-of-life care and the issue of effectiveness in organ procurement.