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Ethical Considerations: Organ transplantation and the definition of death in medical practice

Edited by: Dr Thomas S. Huddle

Collection published in Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine: 22 May 2007
Last updated: 4 February 2008

  1. A series of papers in Philosophy, Ethics and Humanities in Medicine (PEHM) have recently disputed whether non-heart beating organ donors are alive and whether non-heart beating organ donation (NHBD) contravenes t...

    Authors: Thomas S Huddle, Michael A Schwartz, FAmos Bailey and Michael A Bos
    Citation: Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 2008 3:5
  2. 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 f...

    Authors: Ari R Joffe
    Citation: Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 2007 2:28
  3. The issue of organ donation and of how the donor pool can or should be increased is one with significant practical, ethical and logistic implications. Here we comment on an article advocating a paradigm change...

    Authors: Rinaldo Bellomo and Nereo Zamperetti
    Citation: Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 2007 2:27
  4. Advance health care directives and informed consent remain the cornerstones of patients' right to self-determination regarding medical care and preferences at the end-of-life. However, the effectiveness and cl...

    Authors: Joseph L Verheijde, Mohamed Y Rady and Joan L McGregor
    Citation: Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 2007 2:19
  5. Recent commentaries by Verheijde et al, Evans and Potts suggesting that donation after cardiac death practices routinely violate the dead donor rule are based on flawed presumptions. Cell biology, cardiopulmon...

    Authors: Sam D Shemie
    Citation: Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 2007 2:18
  6. Because complex organs taken from unequivocally dead people are not suitable for transplantation, human death has been redefined so that it can be certified at some earlier stage in the dying process and there...

    Authors: David Wainwright Evans
    Citation: Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 2007 2:11
  7. Organ donation after cardiac or circulatory death (DCD) has been introduced to increase the supply of transplantable organs. In this paper, we argue that the recovery of viable organs useful for transplantatio...

    Authors: Joseph L Verheijde, Mohamed Y Rady and Joan McGregor
    Citation: Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 2007 2:8