ArticleThe Linacre quarterly2019
Refinements in the Organism as a Whole Rationale for Brain Death.
Article in The Linacre quarterly, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 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
12 citing papers in PubMed, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- 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
- Inconsistency between the Circulatory and the Brain Criteria of Death in the Uniform Determination of Death Act.The Journal of medicine and philosophy · 2023Article
- Death as the Cessation of an Organism and the Moral Status Alternative.The Journal of medicine and philosophy · 2023Article
- Challenges to Brain Death in Revising the Uniform Determination of Death Act: The UDDA Revision Series.Neurology · 2023Article
- Rationale for revisions to the definition of death and criteria for its determination in Canada.Canadian journal of anaesthesia = Journal canadien d'anesthesie · 2023Article
- How many ways can you die? Multiple biological deaths as a consequence of the multiple concepts of an organism.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2022Article
- Brain death debates: from bioethics to philosophy of science.F1000Research · 2022Article
- Pediatric brain death certification: a narrative review.Translational pediatrics · 2021Review
- Requests for somatic support after neurologic death determination: Canadian physician experiences.Canadian journal of anaesthesia = Journal canadien d'anesthesie · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Death can be defined as the permanent cessation of the organism as a whole. Although the organism as a whole is a century-old concept, it remains better intuited than analyzed. Recent concepts in theoretical biology including hierarchies of organization, emergent functions, and mereology have informed the idea that the organism as a whole is the organism's critical emergent functions. Because the brain conducts the critical emergent functions including conscious awareness and control of respiration and circulation, the cessation of brain functions is death of the organism. A newer concept, the brain as a whole, may offer a superior criterion of death to the whole-brain criterion, because it more closely matches accepted clinical brain death tests and confirms the cessation of the organism's emergent functions. Although the concepts of organism as a whole and brain as a whole remain vague and in need of rigorous biophilosophical analysis, their future precision will be restricted by the categorical limitations intrinsic to theoretical biological models.
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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.