Health Policy Commons^™

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 …

Harnessing Knowledge To Ensure Food Safety: Opportunities To Improve The Nation's Food Safety Information Infrastructure, Michael R. Taylor, Michael B. Batz

Health Policy and Management Faculty Publications

Those working in the food industry face an abundance of information generated by diverse institutions and individuals.

Ensuring the safety of food is critically important to the public's health and a challenge for policy-makers seeking to enhance the government's role in this arena. Although the food industry has an inherent duty to make food safe, the effectiveness of what they do is highly dependent on the quality of the information they receive on potential hazards and good practices.

In this context, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded a project under the auspices of the Food Safety Research Consortium to examine …