ern resuscitative equipment, heart and lung function can be maintained artificially. These developments eventually gave rise to new criteria for the establishment of death. Rather than merely the cessation of cardiopulmonary function, the criteria began to emphasize neurologic activity. Initially, brain death was determined by the amount of time that had passed since the onset of cardiopulmonary failure. Through resuscitation experience, this interval was found to be between 5 and 8 minutes. However, despite the new definition of death, many brain dead patients continued to be resuscitated. As the population of "respirator brain" patients grew, the criteria for death were re-evaluated once again.
In 1968, the ad hoc committee of the Harvard Medical School published the first formal criteria for the identification of brain death. These criteria established that physiological phenomena such as spontaneous heartbeat and ongoing circulation do not necessarily mean that a person is still alive. In fact, accor
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