ArticleThe Journal of medicine and philosophy2016
Determination of Death: A Scientific Perspective on Biological Integration.
Article in The Journal of medicine and philosophy, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- When does life end? Consensus and controversy in defining death.Monash bioethics review · 2026Article
- A structured analysis of the concept of brain death.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2026Article
- The Brain as a Whole? Neuroendocrine Functions and Death by Neurological Criteria.The Linacre quarterly · 2025Article
- Death as the extinction of the source of value: the constructivist theory of death as an irreversible loss of moral status.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2024Article
- Death as the Cessation of an Organism and the Moral Status Alternative.The Journal of medicine and philosophy · 2023Article
- The Understanding of Human Death by Polish Early Career Pre-Specialist Physicians.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- How many ways can you die? Multiple biological deaths as a consequence of the multiple concepts of an organism.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2022Article
- Double Effect Donation.The Linacre quarterly · 2021Article
- Diagnosing death: the "fuzzy area" between life and decomposition.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2021Article
- Brain Death and the Formation of Moral Conscience.The Linacre quarterly · 2019Article
- Humility before New Scientific Evidence: We No Longer Have Moral Certainty that "Brain Death" Is True Death.The Linacre quarterly · 2019Article
- Evolution of the Criteria of "Brain Death": A Critical Analysis Based on Scientific Realism and Christian Anthropology.The Linacre quarterly · 2019Article
- Refinements in the Organism as a Whole Rationale for Brain Death.The Linacre quarterly · 2019Article
- Organ Donation and Declaration of Death: Combined Neurologic and Cardiopulmonary Standards.The Linacre quarterly · 2019Article
- Death, unity, and the brain.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2019Article
- Why psychological accounts of personal identity can accept a brain death criterion and biological definition of death.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2019Article
- When are you dead enough to be a donor? Can any feasible protocol for the determination of death on circulatory criteria respect the dead donor rule?Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2019Article
- Realigning the Neural Paradigm for Death.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2019Article
- How (not) to think of the 'dead-donor' rule.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2018Article
- Total Brain Death and the Integration of the Body Required of a Human Being.The Journal of medicine and philosophy · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Human life is operationally defined by the onset and cessation of organismal function. At postnatal stages of life, organismal integration critically and uniquely requires a functioning brain. In this article, a distinction is drawn between integrated and coordinated biologic activities. While communication between cells can provide a coordinated biologic response to specific signals, it does not support the integrated function that is characteristic of a living human being. Determining the loss of integrated function can be complicated by medical interventions (i.e., "life support") that uncouple elements of the natural biologic hierarchy underlying our intuitive understanding of death. Such medical interventions can allow living human beings who are no longer able to function in an integrated manner to be maintained in a living state. In contrast, medical intervention can also allow the cells and tissues of an individual who has died to be maintained in a living state. To distinguish between a living human being and living human cells, two criteria are proposed: either the persistence of any form of brain function or the persistence of autonomous integration of vital functions. Either of these criteria is sufficient to determine a human being is alive.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.