A Comparative Study of Coma and General Anesthesia and Brain Death in Iran’s Jurisprudence and Law

In this paper, we have first tried to define coma and then compare it with general anesthesia and brain death by resorting to the opinions of the jurists and latest medical findings. Unlike common belief, coma is not a disease; rather, it is a prolonged state of unconsciousness that results from damage to the person’s brain. In this paper, we will investigate the nature of coma and compare and contrast it with similar states of unconsciousness in the science of jurisprudence and law. The most important outcome of this study and the aforesaid comparison and contrast will emerge in the answer to the following question: What state of life is “the person in coma” in? There is an in-depth relation between humans’ life and death on one side and jurisprudence and law on the other side, in the sense that some rules are only applicable to death and the dead person while on the contrary, there are rules that are applicable to the person as long as he is alive and become inapplicable with the passing away of the person. Therefore, a precise examination of the concepts of life and death will be inevitable toward realizing the purpose of this paper.