ArticleTheoretical medicine and bioethics2019
Whole-brain death and integration: realigning the ontological concept with clinical diagnostic tests.
Article in Theoretical medicine and bioethics, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- A structured analysis of the concept of brain death.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2026Article
- Rethinking Brain Death-Why "Dead Enough" Is Not Good Enough: The UDDA Revision Series.Neurology · 2023Article
- Challenges to Brain Death in Revising the Uniform Determination of Death Act: The UDDA Revision Series.Neurology · 2023Article
- Balancing values: implications of a brain-based definition of death for pluralism in Canada.Canadian journal of anaesthesia = Journal canadien d'anesthesie · 2023Article
- The intractable problems with brain death and possible solutions.Philosophy, ethics, and humanities in medicine : PEHM · 2021Review
- Correction to: Whole-brain death and integration: realigning the ontological concept with clinical diagnostic tests.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2020Article
- When is somebody just some body? Ethics as first philosophy and the brain death debate.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2019Article
- Brain death: new questions and fresh perspectives.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
For decades, physicians, philosophers, theologians, lawyers, and the public considered brain death a settled issue. However, a series of recent cases in which individuals were declared brain dead yet physiologically maintained for prolonged periods of time has challenged the status quo. This signals a need for deeper reflection and reexamination of the underlying philosophical, scientific, and clinical issues at stake in defining death. In this paper, I consider four levels of philosophical inquiry regarding death: the ontological basis, actual states of affairs, epistemological standards, and clinical criteria for brain death. I outline several candidates for the states of affairs that may constitute death, arguing that we should strive for a single, unified ontological definition of death as a loss of integrated functioning as a unified organism, while acknowledging that two states of affairs (cardiopulmonary death and whole-brain death) may satisfy this concept. I argue that the clinical criteria for determining whole-brain death should be bolstered to meet the epistemic demand of sufficient certainty in defining death by adding indicators of cerebro-somatic dis-integration to the traditional triad of loss of consciousness, loss of brainstem function, and absence of confounding explanations.
Indexed as
Identifiers
31696418What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.