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CMAJ • August 7, 2001; 165 (3)
© 2001 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors

Letters
Correspondance

Debating the criteria for brain death

David W. Evans

Fellow Commoner of Queens' College Cambridge, UK

Neil Lazar and colleagues say that "brain death is defined as the complete and irreversible absence of all brain function."1 Their claim that brain death "is diagnosed by means of rigorous testing at the bedside"1 has no scientific validity. It is falsified by much evidence to the contrary, some of which can be accessed in Beyond Brain Death: the Case Against Brain Based Criteria for Human Death.2

The unscientific attitude of the authors is made obvious by their statement that "electroencephalography has proven to be unreliable as a supportive test for brain death."1 Decoded, this means that they choose to disregard electroencephalographic evidence of persisting life in brains they wish to call "dead."

References

  1. Lazar NM, Shernie S, Webster GC, Dickens BM. Bioethics for clinicians: 24. Brain death. CMAJ 2001;164(6):833-6.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
  2. Potts M, Byrne PA, Nilges RG, editors. Beyond brain death: the case against brain based criteria for human death. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers; 2000.




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