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eBook details

• Title: Controversies in the Determination of Death: The Philosophical Debate: President's Council on Bioethics.
• Author : Issues in Law & Medicine
• Release Date : January 22, 2009
• Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 290 KB

Description

Why do we describe the central question of this inquiry as a philosophical question? We do so, in part, because this question cannot be settled by appealing exclusively to clinical or pathophysiological facts. Those facts were our focus in the previous chapters in which we sought to clarify important features of "total brain failure," a condition diagnosed in a well-defined subset of comatose, ventilator-dependent patients. As a condition, it is the terminus of a course of pathophysiological events, the effects of which account for certain clinically observable signs (all manifestations of an incapacitated brainstem) and for confirmatory results obtained through selected imaging tests. A patient diagnosed with this condition will never recover brain-dependent functions, including the capacity to breathe and the capacity to exhibit even minimal signs of conscious life. If the patient is sustained with lifesupporting technologies, this condition need not lead immediately to somatic disintegration or failure of other organ systems. These facts are all crucial to answering the question, Is a human being with total brain failure dead? But determining the significance of these facts presents challenges for philosophical analysis and interpretation. In this chapter, we set forth and explore two positions on this philosophical question. One position rejects the widely accepted consensus that the current neurological standard is an ethically valid one for determining death. The other position defends the consensus, taking the challenges posed in recent years as opportunities to strengthen the philosophical rationale for the neurological standard.

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