See but you've hit on exactly the problem, and the article mentions it. It is impossible to know when someone is really dead when some systems critical to life

See but you've hit on exactly the problem, and the article mentions it. It is impossible to know when someone is really dead when some systems critical to life are still operational. Sure, there's a difference between a living person and a corpse, but there's not always a bright line that tells you when the change from one to the other happens. There are several patients who have been declared brain dead--and even scheduled for organ harvesting--who later recovered. [0] People who believe as a premise that brain death is real death can reply all day that these people were just misdiagnosed and were never actually brain dead--and maybe that's true!--but when I'm considering myself as potentially the person on the table, we're back to my original point, that we're trusting the doctor to decide whether I'm actually dead, and the risks are way too high that the doctor will be wrong for me to roll those dice. [0] https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/902143 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/902143