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Declaration Of Death Essay

1468 Words6 Pages

The topic of our mortality is not a subject that is regularly spoken about at the dinner table despite death being the one thing in life that we can be absolutely certain of. Although we know the grim reaper is coming for us, we don’t know when and we don’t know how. Surprisingly, we also do not know how to reach a consensus on what it means to be legally dead. Many believe that you cross the line between life and death when your heart stops beating while in many states, it is an accepted notion that you are no longer alive when you are declared to be totally brain dead, even if your heart still beats. There have been many court battles over the declaration of death of a patient whose brain no longer normally functions as doctors will try and …show more content…

However, what families do not realize is that this declaration of death opens the door to helping countless numbers of current and future patients through things such as organ donation and scientific research as well as offering the loved ones and the patient themselves something equally as important: closure. Yet, they have their own reasons to keep them alive such as not being to let go, religious reasons, or a strong hope for a full recovery. For this research paper, I plan to determine how different understandings of death, specifically brain death, affect the end of life decisions. (add more: defining death: when physicians and families differ) The Uniform Declaration of Death Act or the UDDA was put in place in 1981 after winning approval from both the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association to be used as a guideline for states to follow suit and to limit the ongoing debate about what it means to die. Since healthcare is a state by state basis, states have the right to decide what they believe constitutes death for the people of their state. The UDDA offers two definitions of what can be defined as ‘legally dead,’ for states to accept or modify, one being the “irreversible

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