Death by neurological criteria (DNC) continues to stir global controversy. Philosophers and theologians contest its moral significance, clinicians and bioscientists debate its probative accuracy, a...

Most countries have adopted a total brain standard for determining death, with some opting instead for a brainstem standard. The total brain standard holds that an individual with “irreversible ces...

The Case of Archie Battersbee in the United Kingdom (UK) is a tragic one: a 12-year-old otherwise healthy boy who suffered a cardiac arrest at home on April 7, 2022, and was subsequently diagnosed...

Ariane Lewis offers a comprehensive and expert review of ethical issues raised by brain death in the United Kingdom and how they compare to management of those issues in the United States (Lewis 20...

In “An Overview of Ethical Challenges Raised by Medicolegal Challenges to Death by Neurologic Criteria in the United Kingdom and a Comparison to Management of these Challenges in the USA,” Ariane L...

Arian Lewis provides a comprehensive overview of how the United Kingdom’s medicolegal context manages challenges to determining death by neurologic criteria (DNC) and suggests that a well-crafted s...

Although medicolegal challenges to the use of neurologic criteria to declare death in the USA have been well-described, the management of court cases in the United Kingdom about objections to the use of neurologic criteria to declare death has not been explored in the bioethics or medical literature. This article (1) reviews conceptual, medical and legal differences between death by neurologic criteria (DNC) in the United Kingdom and the rest of the world to contextualize medicolegal challenges to DNC; (2) summarizes (...) highly publicized legal cases related to DNC in the United Kingdom, including the nuanced 2022 case of Archie Battersbee, who was transiently considered dead by neurologic criteria, but ultimately determined to be in a vegetative state/unresponsive-wakeful state; and (3) provides an overview of ethical issues raised by medicolegal challenges to DNC in the United Kingdom and a comparison to the management of these challenges in the USA. (shrink)

In the United States, patients have a clear right to determine what is done to them by doctors. Starting in the early 20th century, multiple court cases paved the way for our current understanding...

Ariane Lewis reviewed medicolegal challenges to Death by Neurologic Criteria (DNC) in the United Kingdom in order to identify and discuss the ethical issues raised (Lewis 2024). Here I briefly clar...

Since the introduction of a new criterion for determining death (i.e., the brain death criterion) in 1968, the research community has been embroiled in debates about whether this criterion should b...

When we consider some controversies among scholars about whether brainstem death is death, we should clearly identify what the controversy is about. Is it about whether the brainstem dead can be ca...

We were delighted to be asked by the editors of the American Journal of Bioethics to provide this editorial in response to Dr. Ariane Lewis’s paper “An Overview of Ethical Issues Raised by Medicole...

In her interesting paper on cross-jurisdictional legal approaches to brain death, Ariane Lewis considers whether informed consent is required for DNC testing in the UK, and proposes that it is not...