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Previous Volume 345:616-618 August 23, 2001 Number 8 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.

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To the Editor: At the beginning of his article on brain death (April 19 issue),¹ Dr. Wijdicks states, "Physicians, health care workers, members of the clergy, and laypeople throughout the world have accepted fully that a person is dead when his or her brain is dead." This statement is dogma, not fact. Many societies throughout the world and some cultures represented in American society do not accept this view. As he later implies, the introduction of brain death as a construct was a political decision first promoted in 1968 by an ad hoc committee at Harvard Medical School, prompted by . . . [Full Text of this Article]

References

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• Leavitt, F J (2003). A volunteer to be killed for his organs. J. Med. Ethics 29: 175-175 [Full Text]