Palliative Care Commons^™

Recognizing Personhood And The Right To Die With Dignity, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

Death cannot be viewed properly as either an event or a configuration. Indeed, multiple parts of the body can continue to live long after the disintegration of its central organization is recorded. Instead of collapsing at a moment in time, technological mechanisms are capable of sustaining the major bodily processes indefinitely--all designed to allow for the harvesting of needed organs for transplantation. State legislative efforts have been undertaken in America to define those specific circumstances when death occurs legally. Although always allowed to exercise reasonable discretion in their decision making, attending physicians will nonetheless be aided by these laws that …