By Matsya Avatara Dasa
Nowadays the great innovations of medical and scientific science can maintain patients alive, even those that in the past were given no hope to survive. These innovations can prolong the patient’s existence artificially even knowing that they will never regain acceptable health and life conditions. This situation is commonly called over-medication. The definition of cerebral death, since the end of the sixties has allowed for the development of transplant surgery. Before that time, the extraction of organs from a patient with a heartbeat was deemed a felony. Among this scientific and social debate there are ever more crucial questions. Up to which point is it right to keep alive a body that is worn out and unable to grant a minimum of dignity to the psycho-physical entity called person? What is the line that marks the decisive boundary between the unavoidable medical assistance and the over-medication?