Faculty Bibliography

The public has long been confused about the concept of brain death. The primary source of confusion results from a failure to distinguish between the definition of death and the criteria or evidence used to detect death's presence

Arthur L. Caplan reviews "Reproductive Genetics and the Law" by Sherman Elias and George J. Annas

Loma Linda's approach has many critics. Some argue that transplant teams must take organs from living children in order to help others to survive. This is irresponsible nonsense. It is true that the absence of a brain makes it impossible to use electrical measurements of brain activity to determine death. Critics say the absence of this test proves that killing is essential. Balderdash! The absence of a brain makes it impossible to measure brain activity. But this does not mean other signs - absence of respiration, dilated pupils, absence of reflexes - will not suffice to announce death's presence

Arthur L. Caplan reviews "Medical Innovation and Bad Outcomes: Legal, Social, and Ethical Responses," edited by Mark Siegler

Those who espouse murder as medicine's cure of last resort do no better. Do right-to-die devotees have even a dim perception of the level of distrust that exists between patients and doctors? Do they realize many elderly nursing homes patients are afraid when a doctor or nurse raises the subject of dying that it might be a polite way of saying they won't receive care if their bill goes too high? Have they ever watched as a family swooped around the hospital bed like vultures waiting to grab a chunk of their dear departing's financial assets?

Our administration has followed another course. At the behest of the extreme right, it has done nothing. Many conservatives argue that sending out any information under government aegis would be to put a stamp of approval on sodomy, promiscuity and drug use. This ludicrous argument has held sway throughout the Reagan presidency. The AIDS virus was identified at the beginning of Reagan's first term. It's only with the clock ticking in the final quarter of the Reagan era that Washington has decided to communicate with us about the epidemic

The NCI's problem is not with patients but with physicians. Specifically, the vast majority of physicians who do not recruit their patients into NCI-sponsored clinical trials

That may be changing in the glasnost era. Last month, a delegation of five American philosophers flew to Moscow to discuss medical ethics for the first time with Soviet philosophers and doctors. They met with about 25 of their Soviet counterparts at the Institute of Philosophy, a division of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, in Moscow, and at the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic's Research Institute of Therapy, a medical research facility and hospital, in Tbilisi, a city of 2 million people