What is the difference between brain death and human death?

Clinical death is the loss of all physiological functions

Brain death is the criteria for declaring death by reference to the permanent loss of function of the brainstem or the central nervous system above the brainstem. Brain death is different from "vegetable", "vegetable" brain stem function is normal, coma is only due to severe damage to the cerebral cortex or in a state of sudden inhibition, the patient can have voluntary breathing, heartbeat and brain stem response, but brain death is no voluntary breathing, is permanent and irreversible.

Many countries in the past have taken "cardiac arrest," "loss of respiration" and "zero blood pressure" as the criteria for death. However, with the development of medical science and technology, the patient's heartbeat, respiration, blood pressure and other vital signs can be reversed or maintained for a long time through a series of drugs and advanced equipment. However, if structural damage occurs in the brainstem, no matter what medical treatment is taken, the patient will eventually develop cardiac death. Therefore, compared with cardiac death, brain death appears to be a more scientific and reliable criterion.

Since 1968, when the Special Committee on the Review of the Definition of Death at Harvard University proposed a diagnostic index for brain death, more than 80 countries and regions around the world have successively established death criteria, and some countries have also formulated corresponding brain death laws, but there are also countries that have adopted the coexistence of brain death and respiratory death criteria.