Liverpool Care Pathway - The Dangerous Road We Tread

The Redefining Of Medical Ethics

When is the moment of death? Is death a moment or a process; is it a threshold, a broad plain of terminal existence?

Park  has dropped the final curtain and says that death should be clinically redefined as permanent unconsciousness. This will enable the ‘ethical’ harvest of organs from those so defined.

Parnia has drawn that curtain back and exposed a fascinating process that would surely define such an act as ethically questionable, at the very least.

Now, Glannon suggests suspending the dead donor rule (DDR) altogether. It matters not when or where the curtain is dropped or drawn.

This is Cambridge Journals and The Moral Insignificance of Death in Organ Donation -



WALTER GLANNON (2013). The Moral Insignificance of Death in Organ Donation. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 22, pp 192-202. doi:10.1017/S0963180112000564.