[Brain death and intensive care medicine. Legal problems]

"Death as the limit of the natural legal capacity is such a simple natural event that, just as for birth, it is not necessary to exactly determine its elements" declared the legal academic Friedrich Karl von Savigny 150 years ago. However, a stable legal order necessitates clear and if possible simple, catchy objective reference. The clinical concept of death at the point of irreversible cessation of circulation and breathing, in view of the possibilities of modern intensive medical care and the obvious redundant terms "brain death" and "cardiac-circulation death", belongs to the past. Nowadays death is seen in the final cessation of all functions of the complete brain. Death as a legal term must, however, be "functionally" established with respect to the various aims and objectives of the Law. In this article the normative consequences of this distinction for intensive care medicine will be clarified.