Since 1995, the American Academy of Neurology has provided guidelines for brain death determination, but nationwide adherence to these guidelines has been incomplete.
AMA J Ethics. 2020; 22(12):E1027-1032. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2020.1027.
Death’s legal definition must be responsive to advances in technology, and it must delineate between life and death. Knowing where to draw the line is difficult.
AMA J Ethics. 2020; 22(12):E1055-1061. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2020.1055.
The Holocaust and the racial hygiene doctrine that helped rationalize it still overshadow contemporary debates about using gene editing for disease prevention.
AMA J Ethics. 2021; 23(1):E49-54. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.49.
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.
The AMA’s Historic Health Fraud and Alternative Medicine Collection includes images of quack devices from the early 20th century that generated oversight we now take for granted.
AMA J Ethics. 2021; 23(9):E721-738. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.721.