Bartlett E T
Cleveland State University, Ohio, USA.
J Med Ethics. 1995 Oct;21(5):270-6. doi: 10.1136/jme.21.5.270.
With so much attention being paid to the development and refinement of appropriate criteria and tests for death, little attention has been given to the broader conceptual issues having to do with its definition or with the relation of a definition to its criterion. The task of selecting the correct criterion is, however, virtually impossible without proper attention to the broader conceptual setting in which the definition operates as the key feature. All of the issues I will discuss arise because of this lack of concern with conceptual matters. Such problems as incorrectly diagnosing a patient as dead prior to the harvesting of his or her organs, defending the idea that death is reversible, and advocating a brainstem criterion of death, are all, I believe, errors that derive from this misplaced emphasis.
人们如此关注死亡恰当标准和检测方法的制定与完善，却很少关注与死亡定义以及定义和标准之间关系等更广泛的概念性问题。然而，如果不适当关注定义作为关键特征发挥作用的更广泛概念背景，选择正确标准的任务几乎是不可能完成的。我将讨论的所有问题都是由于缺乏对概念问题的关注而产生的。我认为，诸如在摘取患者器官之前错误地将其诊断为死亡、捍卫死亡是可逆的观点以及倡导脑干死亡标准等问题，都是源于这种错误的侧重点的错误。
