The concept of brain death: Are you dead, if you are brain dead? Doig and E. Burgess’s “Brain death: Resolving inconsistencies in the ethical declaration of death”). Some countries consider brainstem death as death (13% of countries in an international survey, e.g., the UK, Canada, and India), whereas most countries (including the US, Australia, and Japan) require the demonstration of whole brain death (Gardiner et al. Grisolia’s “The World Brain Death Project: Answering the wrong questions”) involving the death of a 13-year-old child following ear, nose, and throat surgery in the US brought into focus the persisting dilemmas regarding the determination of brain death, where the child was kept alive for more than five years after the initial brain death declaration. The World Brain Death Project’s consensus statement in August 2020, acknowledges the “confusion and dilemmas”, “inconsistencies in concept, criteria, practice, and documentation of brain death” and the “wide variance in practice internationally and within countries” and hence recommends abandoning the terms “whole brain death” and “brainstem death”, and calls for consistency in using the term “brain death/death by neurological criteria (BD/DNC)”.

Source: The Nation January 12, 2022 10:49 UTC