Death, Doctors, and Organ Transplants

What would you consider death?

Would it be after your heart has stopped? If so, for how long?
Would it be if you were unequivocally brain dead? But whose to say what that is?
Would it be if you were certain to remain a vegetable?

Interesting questions. Interesting debate remarked upon by the Washington Post.

I had never really thought about it. Like many, I assumed death was after the heart stopped or the brain was permanently kaput.

I didn't know that death was open to interpretation. I thought it just...was. I know that my "interpretation" of death deals with the soul departing, but the soul does not depart without the body's passing.

Or is it the body does not pass without the soul's passing?

Either way, death is no longer simple.

What do you consider "irrevocably dead" and "open for business" for organs harvesting?