Abstract
Until recently there was very little reason for the law to address the determination of death. The determination of death was not itself an issue — it was easy enough for an appropriately trained person, and even for most laymen, to distinguish a dead man from a living one. Is he breathing and is his heart beating? In retrospect, of course, it might be difficult to ascertain the precise moment of death but on the whole not much hinged on such a finding. Now that medical technology has developed sophisticated life support systems, it has produced a class of patients whose status as alive or dead cannot readily be resolved by traditional tests. This fact has made the determination of death an issue for medicine. I would like to explore some of the parameters of that issue and to examine the extent to which it is properly one for the law to address.
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© 1988 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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White, P.D. (1988). Should the Law Define Death? — A Genuine Question. In: Zaner, R.M. (eds) Death: Beyond Whole-Brain Criteria. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 31. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2707-0_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2707-0_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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