A pregnant nurse, declared brain-dead, remains on life support in order to save her child. The case raises profound bioethical questions about respect for human dignity, the absolute value of unborn life, and the limits of medical intervention. How far [...]
In a recent article published in the journal Science, the authors propose using the bodies of people declared neurologically deceased (brain-dead) for research purposes. Physiologically maintained deceased (PMD) individuals mimic living human physiology and could provide new research opportunities. These [...]
A study entitled “Recovery Potential in Patients who Died after Withdrawal of Life-sustaining Treatment” has recently been published in the Journal of Trauma (1). In the article, the authors analyzed the ability of certain clinical scales to predict the survival [...]
A recent study conducted in dying patients, published in the journal Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine (1), was able to demonstrate how the global cerebral hypoxia that occurs in these patients after withdrawal of their ventilatory support markedly stimulated [...]
A recent article, published in the prestigious scientific journal BMC Medical Ethics, analyzes the important issue of assessing the level of consciousness in patients suffering from disorders at this level, which represents an urgent challenge for their attention, monitoring and [...]
The diagnosis of death by neurological criteria, often called brain death, has been contentious since its conception in 1968 through a publication entitled “A Definition of Irreversible Coma. Report of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to [...]
An article published in The Economist newspaper on August 26, 2021, states that “the technological advance in the ICU (intensive care unit) that allows keeping patients alive, almost indefinitely, is a problem for hospitals.” Dr. Robert Truog, a pediatric intensive [...]
Recently, an article entitled “National Recommendations on Pediatric Donation” was published in Spanish journal Anales de Pediatría – Annals of Pediatrics – ( read HERE) The article is a summary of a consensus document drawn up by the Spanish National [...]
The emergence of the concept of brain death at the end of the 1960s was a controversial fact, although today it is widely accepted in most developed countries. Nevertheless, there are still some issues for discussion in this regard, including [...]
Along with the objective, medical and ethical problems posed by euthanasia and assisted suicide, no less controversial are, those that arise in relation to language engineering [the semantic manipulation of the terminology] used around them. In our view, however, two [...]
Talented canoeist Catarina Sequeira, 26, had been declared brain dead (read our reports of brain death controversy) after she suffered an acute asthma attack at her home when she was 19 weeks’ pregnant. Earlier this year Catarina gave birth a [...]
With a large majority (392-162), the most important medical institution in the United States reiterates that assisted suicide is not a medical act. It is “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer” AMA says. AMA’s Council on Ethical and [...]
