A definition of irreversible coma Report of the Ad Hoc Commi

A definition of irreversible coma. Report of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to examine the definition of brain death. Why does the current scientific view of death provoke ethical issues?

Solution

Improvements in resuscitative and supportive measures have led to increased efforts to save those who are desperately injured .sometimes these efforts have only partial success so that the result is an individual whose heart continues to beat but whose brain is irreversibly damaged .The burden is great on patients who suffer permanent loss of intellect on other families on the hospitals and on those in need of hospitals beds already occupied by these comatose patients. Obsulute criteria for the definition of death can lead to controverses in obtaining organs for transplantation. Irreversible coma has many causes but we are concerned here only with those comatose individually who have no characteristics can be defined in satisfactory terms.