The mythical qualities of which we have been speaking are powers or produce power. What appeals most to the imagination is the ease with which the magician achieves his ends. He has the gift of conjuring up more things than any ordinary mortals can dream of. His words, his gestures, his glances, even his thoughts are forces in themselves. His own person emanates influences before which nature and men, spirits and gods must give way.
Marcel Mauss, A General Theory of Magic
In Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death, Margaret Lock discusses the implications behind the establishment of death as an event (specific technical indicator(s) reporting the likelihood of the irreversible cessation of cerebral function) rather than a process, and the procurement of human organs. Lock reveals the socio-political and economic contexts in which the mere acceptance of organ transplants and "brain-death" in North American culture signifies embodied beliefs about nature, culture, the mind/body dichotomy, and even the concept of the soul or "personhood." Lock illustrates in detail the commodification process of the human body and its components, the point when the social duty of the attending physician lies not with his/her patients, but with the market value of that patient's organs and the protracted well-being of the future recipient. Lock points out incongruities that exist when one acknowledges the perfusing body of an individual legally defined as dead. She states, "In stark contrast to the half-hidden, pale, lifeless face of the brain-dead person, the interior of the body is colorful and alive" (20). Such incongruities fuel the debate on death as occurring upon the death of the brain when one can no longer observe death but rather is dependent on machines to state its occurrence. Lock indicates that defining death as an event rather than a process is central to the legality of organ procurement. If death is simply the point when the brain ceases to function, and this cessation is verifiable, then removal of vital organs such as the heart and liver would not be murder, under law.
As we have seen, conceptions of health and illness have been systematically re-worked and negotiated in order to support or resist cultural, social, political, and economic regimes. Lock depicts the contextual reframing of death in order to serve what may be deemed pragmatic and altruistic extensions of science. Defining death as the point when the brain ceases to function, is seemingly characteristic of the mind/body dichotomy that is prevalent in western cultures. To insist that brain-death signifies death of the person and attempting to export this notion into universal biomedical practice is seemingly intrusive and in violation of various familial and cultural milieus. Lock illustrates how the mind/body split associated with western culture recapitulates western philosophy (73). A look into the writings of Rene Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, provides insights as to the genealogy of the mind/body split in biomedicine and western culture as a whole. The following is a statement regarding Descartes theory on the pineal gland as being the seat of the sensus communis or soul. The statement is a succinct reiteration of Descartes's theory involving the pineal gland and the placement of the soul or "personhood" in the brain, by Jean Cousins, a defender of Descartes.
...one may observe a gland, called the pineal gland, which is situated like a centre in the middle of the ventricles, and which is the meeting point of threads coming from the external senses as if from the circumference; and because it is unique, supported by the choroid plexus and permanently inflated by the spirits which have been elaborated, it is only in this gland that the double appearances received by both the eyes and the ears can and must be united: "for there is one sense faculty, and one paramount sense organ." Aristotle was therefore mistaken when he located the common sense in the heart, the Arabs were mistaken when they located it in the anterior part of the brain, and the Metoposcopists were mistaken when they located it in the forehead and its wrinkles (Lockhorst 8).
In the article "The Ambiguity about Death in Japan: an Ethical Implication for organ procurement," author John Robert McConnell III asserts that Japanese religious and philosophical culture is influenced by Shinto, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. He explains the effects that these belief systems have on the social perception of death and organ procurement. For instance, McConnell III illustrates the teachings of Confucianism and Taoism and how such belief structures infer that the "human body is a microcosm of the universe" (323). The integrity of the body after death is then perceived as essential to providing a "resting place for the soul." The notion of "brain death" is easily accepted within a culture that widely distinguishes from the mind and body, where the soul rests in the mind and mans the controls that maneuver the body. Within this mechanistic paradigm, with Judeo-Christian influences, organ procurement is justified as moral and pragmatic.
The rituals associated with death, Lock describes, can be associated with Turnerian liminality in that they represent the transition from 
one social order to another. The "performance," i.e. funeral procession, marks the transition between one's engagement within the social realm and one's cessation of all engagement. Death, thus, is a social and cultural process as much as it is a biological process or event. Lock takes notice of the protracted liminality of death and states, "the liminal period may commence before biological death sets in. It spans the ambiguous time of biological, spiritual, personal, and social transformations associated with dying and death" (198). The condition of "brain death" creates visual ambiguities that appear to greatly interfere with the necessary rite of passage that allows for the acceptance of one's passing and, further more, the re-establishment of social order, if only minutely. Lock demonstrates the peculiar nature in which North American and European cultures have been able to widely accept brain-death as symbolizing total death. She indicates that is is a typical assumption of the West to associate culture with the "other" and negate the cultural and religious traditions of the West. Lock does not then simply associate the limited acceptance and ambivalence regarding organ procurement and "brain-death" as being a peculiarity among the Japanese or a rejection of modernity by the "other." She asserts that organ procurement measures may provide relief to North American and European sensitivities in that the continuation of life via technology seems to "transcend the 'scandal' of biological death" (206). Lock reiterates Foucault's suggestion that death is perceived as a failure on the part of medical technology (203). This notion appears to portray the tragedy of death as transcending the personal and familial and framing death as a socio-political tragedy as well (203). I am reminded of the example stated in earlier in the book where Lock notes the reluctance of the medical community to disclose limitations in medical technology.
Hoffenberg is still shocked about a photograph showing Philip Blaiberg, the recipient of Haupt's heart, "swimming" at a Cape Town beach several months after surgery. He recalls that Blaiberg was never able to walk independently after surgery. For the photograph he had to be taken down to the water's edge in a wheelchair, carried into the ocean, photographed, and then hauled out again (85).
The quote by Marcel Mauss at the top of the page illustrates the relationship between Mauss's definition of magic and the culture of biomedicine. It appears as though the physician is not unlike a post-modern magician where notions of nature and man, spirits and gods are forced to give way to scientific rationalism and biomedical hegemony.
Dialysis Painting by Elisabeth Frauendorfer, PhD
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