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Back from the Grave: Recurring Controversies over Defining and Diagnosing Death in History

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Death: Beyond Whole-Brain Criteria

Part of the book series: Philosophy and Medicine ((PHME,volume 31))

Abstract

On December 2, 1967, a car accident in Cape Town, South Africa, destroyed the brain of a young woman named Denise Ann Darvall. Dr. Christiaan Barnard and his colleagues implanted her heart in Louis Washkansky, a victim of terminal heart failure, thus making him the world’s first successful heart transplant recipient. In reporting the dramatic event, both the professional and popular press immediately focussed on the question asked by the headline in Newsweek Magazine’s coverage of the story: “When Are You Really Dead?” ([245], [242], [243], [184], p. 59).

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  1. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

    Martin S. Pernick

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  1. Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA

    Richard M. Zaner Ph.D. (Ann Geddes Stahlman Professor of Medicical Ethics) (Ann Geddes Stahlman Professor of Medicical Ethics)

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Pernick, M.S. (1988). Back from the Grave: Recurring Controversies over Defining and Diagnosing Death in History. 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_2

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