Health Sciences 2610F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Craniotomy, Fetus, Hysterectomy
5 Mar 2016
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Lecture 3 - end of life decisions. Prior to 1968 irreversibility cessation of cardio pulmonary function. Old clinical definition of death before second half of twentieth century: restart or continue the beating of the heart. 1)both cardiopulmonary criterion: when the heart stops beating the person stops breathing considered dead. 1968 brain activity there is no specific way of understanding when someone is dead or not. And no definition of consciousness, no one can understand what it is. Cannot prove when someone is conscious. 2) complete/full brain death clinically, legally and socially acceptable. A complete lack of functioning in the brain: everything to the brain stem and doesn"t light up. 2 problems: 1) essential bodily functions can carry on without the brain. 3) higher brain death more philosophically accurate. This seems wrong: this criterion is also not very pragmatic . Dead donor rule only can harvest organs from people that have been declared dead.
