FREE NEJM E-TOC    HOME   |   SUBSCRIBE   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   COLLECTIONS   |   Search Term  Advanced Search

Sign in | Get NEJM's E-Mail Table of Contents — Free | Subscribe

Previous Volume 331:1382-1383 November 17, 1994 Number 20 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

	Full Text Purchase this article Add to Personal Archive Add to Citation Manager Notify a Friend E-mail When Cited Related Article by Angell, M. Related Article by The Multi-Society Task Force on PVS

To the Editor: In an otherwise cogent editorial (May 26 issue)¹ about public-policy alternatives for handling patients in a persistent vegetative state, Dr. Angell makes one inaccurate observation. We agree with her that calling such patients dead would not work, because they simply do not "look dead." On the other hand, her statement that brain-dead patients have "no signs of life" is mistaken: brain-dead patients receiving mechanical ventilation have spontaneously beating hearts, healthy skin color, warmth, digestion, and metabolism. Some brain-dead patients have "incubated" live fetuses for weeks until they can be delivered safely by cesarean section.

Families of brain-dead . . . [Full Text of this Article]

References

HOME  |  SUBSCRIBE  |  SEARCH  |  CURRENT ISSUE  |  PAST ISSUES  |  COLLECTIONS  |  PRIVACY  |  HELP  |  beta.nejm.org Comments and questions? Please contact us. The New England Journal of Medicine is owned, published, and copyrighted © 2008 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved.