Abstract
I have been asked to describe and assess the work of the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research on the problem of “defining” death. In the midst of a conference devoted to very thoughtful philosophical analyses by physicians and historians as well as philosophers, a presentation on a governmental report takes on the appearance of a thorn among the roses. Although the work of the President’s Commission on this subject — presented in July, 1981, in the report Defining Death — had among its objectives that of being conceptually sound, it was by no means primarily a philosophical document, but instead part of the process of formulating public policy. While I believe it is fair to ask questions about the report’s theoretical aspects, I also believe that any judgment on the success of this endeavor has to be made primarily in terms of its impact with lawmakers as well as its practical usefulness to physicians and others who actually have to make death determinations.
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© 1988 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Capron, A.M. (1988). The Report of the President’s Commission on the Uniform Determination of Death ACT. 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_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2707-0_7
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