Abstract

Fourteen essays from thirteen contributors in philosophy, law, and medicine comprise this text. They focus on a question that medical technology has pushed into the public policy arena: what are the criteria, if any, which permit a valid, sure determination of death--its time, its occurrence--in the patient believed irreversibly dying? Success at such a determination would have consequences not only for the patient, but for his family, the law, medicine, and society at large; so would failure.