For many physicians, lack of understanding about brain death leads to confusion and muddles interactions with patients’ loved ones at the end of life.

The Nuremberg Code, the World Medical Association’s declarations of Geneva and Helsinki, and the Belmont Report share an origin in the Holocaust.

Immorally acquired information, from Nazi experimentation or other sources, infects the body of scientific and biomedical knowledge.

The Holocaust differs from other instances of mass murder in that it was medically sanctioned genocide.

Guidance from the Code addresses legitimacy and trustworthiness of information from unethical experimentation.

Dr Ariane Lewis discusses how we can navigate uncertainty and ambiguity about brain death by understanding clinical criteria for brain death determination and how our approaches to death are culturally and socially situated.

Abolition medicine and reproductive justice are synergistic approaches that advance a radical vision of a racially just world.

Medical education that omits critical discourse about racism perpetuates racism.

Health professions educators should reform pedagogy on race, when clinically relevant, to emphasize racism as the root cause of health inequity.

Critical race theory tools of evaluating stock characters and counter stories can help clinicians and researchers illuminate experiences of those at the margins.