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Full-Text Articles in Health Policy
Diagnosing Death: Why Does It Remain "Well Settled And Persistently Unresolved"?, Melissa M. Goldstein
Diagnosing Death: Why Does It Remain "Well Settled And Persistently Unresolved"?, Melissa M. Goldstein
Health Policy and Management Faculty Publications
For ten days after Motl Brody had been declared dead by physicians, the 12-year-old boy lay in an intensive-care unit of Children's National Medical Center, sustained by drugs and a ventilator. His Orthodox Jewish parents insisted that, according to religious law, Motl remained alive because his heart continued to beat. District of Columbia law said he did not.
Although statutes on the books of every U.S. state allow a determination of death when all functions of the brain, including the brain stem, have irreversibly ceased, there is continued debate, especially in religious, philosophical, and bioethics contexts, about how, or even …