Criteria of Death:

Moral Issues
Bilal Umar GM 7
Learning Objectives

 Definition
 Criteria of Death
 Operational Definition of human
 Moral Issue
 History
 Death
 Ethical Issues
 Reference
Criteria of Death

Death occurs when there is permanent

loss of capacity for consciousness and
loss of all brainstem functions. This may
result from permanent cessation of
circulation and/ or after catastrophic brain
injury.

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 The Law

 There is no statutory definition of death in the

United Kingdom (Unlike USA).
 The determination of death using neurological
criteria has been accepted by the courts of
England and Wales.
 Otherwise you re dead when a doctor says so
= accepted medical practice
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Operational Definition of Human Death

 Death occurs when there is permanent loss of

capacity for consciousness and loss of all brainstem
functions.This may result from permanent cessation
of circulation and/ or after catastrophic brain injury.
 In the context of death determination, permanent
refers to loss of function that cannot resume
spontaneously and will not be restored through
intervention

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Moral Issues

Continuing artificial life support

for patients who are brain dead
may produce harm to patients,
families, and others involved.
Declaration of brain death should
not be delayed to wait for families
or to justify hospital care. Instead,
appropriate family care should be
provided after the death
declaration.
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 “The term brain death signifies that
there is more than one variety of
death. This is a serious
misconception, perpetuated by such
statements as “the patient declared
brain dead at 3:00 a.m. on Thursday
and died two days later.” There is
only one real phenomenon of death
that clinicians and families struggle
to recognize.”

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History

“A case of Elaine Esposito who

lapsed into coma following
surgery on August 6, 1941 and
died on November 25, 1978, 37
years and 111 days later.”
President council (2008) of
bioethics*

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Death

Death is often considered in terms of medical,

legal, ethical, philosophical, societal, cultural,
and religious rationales. The biomedical
definition of death is primarily a scientific
issue supported by the best available evidence.
A medical practitioner has certain ethical and
legal responsibilities regarding death, such as
the effort for prevention of death,
determination of death, determination of
time/moment of death, declaration of death,
issuing the certificate, and if needed, autopsy
or organ removal for transplantation. That
aspect has a lot of ethical, legal, emotional, and
scientific issues

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Definition of death ethically significant

The reason that the definition of

death and the ethics of organ
procurement are so closely linked in
the public imagination is that the
source of cadaveric organs has
always been the newly dead. A
newly dead person fulfils two
fundamental requirements for being
a source of organs.

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Ethical Issues

The main situations that create

ethical difficulties for healthcare
professionals are the decisions
regarding resuscitation, mechanical
ventilation, artificial nutrition and
hydration, terminal sedation,
withholding and withdrawing
treatments, euthanasia, and
physician-assisted suicide.

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 Reference
ethical decision‐making framework. Scandinavian
Journal of Caring Sciences. hƩps://doi‐
org.uml.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/scs.12548.
Tarzian (2018) Repeat Valve Replacement in a Person
With Substance Use Disorder: What Does JusƟce
Dictate? Click icon to add picture
The American Journal of Bioethics, 18(1), pp. 74–75.
Tishler, Reiss & Dundas (2013). The assessment and
management of the violent paƟent in criƟcal hospital
seƫngs. General Hospital Psychiatry (35) 181–185.
Usher et al (2017). Safety, risk, and aggression:
Health professionals’ experiences of caring for people
affected by
methamphetamine when presenƟng for emergency
care. InternaƟonal Journal of Mental Health Nursing
(26),
437–444.
References
thank you