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  1. The brain and somatic integration: Insights into the standard biological rationale for equating brain death with death.D. Alan Shewmon - 2001 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 26 (5):457 – 478.
    The mainstream rationale for equating brain death (BD) with death is that the brain confers integrative unity upon the body, transforming it from a mere collection of organs and tissues to an organism as a whole. In support of this conclusion, the impressive list of the brains myriad integrative functions is often cited. Upon closer examination, and after operational definition of terms, however, one discovers that most integrative functions of the brain are actually not somatically integrating, and, conversely, most integrative (...)
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  • Brain Death — Too Flawed to Endure, Too Ingrained to Abandon.Robert D. Truog - 2007 - Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 35 (2):273-281.
    The concept of brain death was recently described as being “at once well settled and persistently unresolved.” Every day, in the United States and around the world, physicians diagnose patients as brain dead, and then proceed to transplant organs from these patients into others in need. Yet as well settled as this practice has become, brain death continues to be the focus of controversy, with two journals in bioethics dedicating major sections to the topic within the last two years.By way (...)
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  • Death and organ procurement: Public beliefs and attitudes.Laura A. Siminoff, Christopher Burant & Stuart J. Youngner - 2004 - Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 14 (3):217-234.
    : Although "brain death" and the dead donor rule—i.e., patients must not be killed by organ retrieval—have been clinically and legally accepted in the U.S. as prerequisites to organ removal, there is little data about public attitudes and beliefs concerning these matters. To examine the public attitudes and beliefs about the determination of death and its relationship to organ transplantation, 1351 Ohio residents ≥18 years were randomly selected and surveyed using random digit dialing (RDD) sample frames. The RDD telephone survey (...)
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  • The Dead Donor Rule: Should We Stretch It, Bend It, or Abandon It?Robert M. Arnold & Stuart J. Youngner - 1993 - Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 3 (2):263-278.
    The dead donor rule—that persons must be dead before their organs are taken—is a central part of the moral framework underlying organ procurement. Efforts to increase the pool of transplantable organs have been forced either to redefine death (e.g., anencephaly) or take advantage of ambiguities in the current definition of death (e.g., the Pittsburgh protocol). Society's growing acceptance of circumstances in which health care professionals can hasten a patient's death also may weaken the symbolic importance of the dead donor rule. (...)
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  • Brain Death: Can It Be Resuscitated?D. Alan Shewmon - 2009 - Hastings Center Report 39 (2):18-24.
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  • Death and legal fictions.S. K. Shah, R. D. Truog & F. G. Miller - 2011 - Journal of Medical Ethics 37 (12):719-722.
    Advances in life-saving technologies in the past few decades have challenged our traditional understandings of death. Traditionally, death was understood to occur when a person stops breathing, their heart stops beating and they are cold to the touch. Today, physicians determine death by relying on a diagnosis of ‘total brain failure’ or by waiting a short while after circulation stops. Evidence has emerged, however, that the conceptual bases for these approaches to determining death are fundamentally flawed and depart substantially from (...)
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  • (3 other versions)The biophilosophical basis of whole-brain death.James L. Bernat - 2002 - Soc Philos Policy 19 (2):324-42.
    Notwithstanding these wise pronouncements, my project here is to characterize the biological phenomenon of death of the higher animal species, such as vertebrates. My claim is that the formulation of “whole- brain death ” provides the most congruent map for our correct understanding of the concept of death. This essay builds upon the foundation my colleagues and I have laid since 1981 to characterize the concept of death and refine when this event occurs. Although our society's well-accepted program of multiple (...)
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  • (3 other versions)The biophilosophical basis of whole-brain death.James L. Bernat - 2002 - Social Philosophy and Policy 19 (2):324-342.
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  • The Incoherence of Determining Death by Neurological Criteria: A Commentary on Controversies in the Determination of Death, A White Paper by the President's Council on Bioethics.Franklin G. Miller & Robert D. Truog - 2009 - Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 19 (2):185-193.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Incoherence of Determining Death by Neurological Criteria: A Commentary on Controversies in the Determination of Death, A White Paper by the President’s Council on Bioethics*Franklin G. Miller** (bio) and Robert D. Truog (bio)Traditionally the cessation of breathing and heart beat has marked the passage from life to death. Shortly after death was determined, the body became a cold corpse, suitable for burial or cremation. Two technological changes in (...)
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  • How Much of the Brain Must Die in Brain Death?James L. Bernat - 1992 - Journal of Clinical Ethics 3 (1):21-26.
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  • The ethics of donation and transplantation: are definitions of death being distorted for organ transplantation?Ari R. Joffe - 2007 - Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 2:28.
    A recent commentary defends 1) the concept of 'brain arrest' to explain what brain death is, and 2) the concept that death occurs at 2–5 minutes after absent circulation. I suggest that both these claims are flawed. Brain arrest is said to threaten life, and lead to death by causing a secondary respiratory then cardiac arrest. It is further claimed that ventilation only interrupts this way that brain arrest leads to death. These statements imply that brain arrest is not death (...)
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  • Are recent defences of the brain death concept adequate?Ari Joffe - 2009 - Bioethics 24 (2):47-53.
    Brain death is accepted in most countries as death. The rationales to explain why brain death is death are surprisingly problematic. The standard rationale that in brain death there has been loss of integrative unity of the organism has been shown to be false, and a better rationale has not been clearly articulated. Recent expert defences of the brain death concept are examined in this paper, and are suggested to be inadequate. I argue that, ironically, these defences demonstrate the lack (...)
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  • The Ethics of Creating and Responding to Doubts about Death Criteria.James M. Dubois - 2010 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 35 (3):365-380.
    Expressing doubts about death criteria can serve healthy purposes, but can also cause a number of harms, including decreased organ donation rates and distress for donor families and health care staff. This paper explores the various causes of doubts about death criteria—including religious beliefs, misinformation, mistrust, and intellectual questions—and recommends responses to each of these. Some recommended responses are relatively simple and noncontroversial, such as providing accurate information. However, other responses would require significant changes to the way we currently do (...)
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  • Mass media campaigns and organ donation: managing conflicting messages and interests. [REVIEW]Mohamed Y. Rady, Joan L. McGregor & Joseph L. Verheijde - 2012 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 15 (2):229-241.
    Mass media campaigns are widely and successfully used to change health decisions and behaviors for better or for worse in society. In the United States, media campaigns have been launched at local offices of the states’ department of motor vehicles to promote citizens’ willingness to organ donation and donor registration. We analyze interventional studies of multimedia communication campaigns to encourage organ-donor registration at local offices of states’ department of motor vehicles. The media campaigns include the use of multifaceted communication tools (...)
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