Vatican newspaper disputes when life ends

For the past 40 years, doctors and ethicists have accepted "brain death" as the official end of life.

But in a front-page editorial Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, says the almost universally accepted definition established by Harvard doctors in August 1968, "contradicts Catholic doctrine," the Telegraph reports.

Prior the Harvard study, the absence of heart beat had been said to define death.

"The assumption of brain death is in contradiction with the concept of the person according to Catholic doctrine, and therefore in contradiction with the church's directive on persistent comas," the article signed by Lucetta Scaraffia, a bioethics expert, says.

Papal spokesman Padre Federico Lombardi said that the editorial was a personal opinion and not official Vatican policy, but called the article "interesting and authoritative." The Vatican's leading spokesman on health issues, Cardinal Javier Lozano, agreed "completely" with the article.

Scaraffia's editorial says the definition of brain death relies on medicine's understanding of the central nervous system, noting that understanding might change as a result of research currently under way.