Review

Pro/con ethics debate: When is dead really dead?

Leslie Whetstine¹ , Stephen Streat² , Mike Darwin³ and David Crippen⁴

¹Health Care Ethics Center, Duquesne University, 600 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15282, USA

²Department of Critical Care Medicine, Auckland Hospital, Private Bag 92-024, Auckland, New Zealand

³Independent Critical Care Consultant, PO Box 1175, Ash Fork Arizona 86320, USA

⁴Department of Critical Care Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, 644a Scaife Hall, 3550 Terrace Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15261

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Critical Care 2005, 9:538-542doi:10.1186/cc3894

Published:	31 October 2005

Abstract

Contemporary intensive care unit (ICU) medicine has complicated the issue of what constitutes death in a life support environment. Not only is the distinction between sapient life and prolongation of vital signs blurred but the concept of death itself has been made more complex. The demand for organs to facilitate transplantation promotes a strong incentive to define clinical death in a manner that most effectively supplies that demand. We consider the problem of defining death in the ICU as a function of viable organ availability for transplantation