A Definition of Irreversible Coma
Item
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Title
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A Definition of Irreversible Coma
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ABP identifier
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ABP-W-0010
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Date
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1968
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Type
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Report / journal article
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Description
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Report of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death, published in JAMA on August 5, 1968. The committee proposed irreversible coma as a new criterion for death in response to developments in life-sustaining treatment and organ transplantation.
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Intellectual stream
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Clinical ethics & professionalism
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Law & public policy
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Verification status
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Verified
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Evidence confidence
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High
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Historical significance
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The report became a major foundation for subsequent medical and legal approaches to death by neurological criteria and helped make the definition of death a central bioethical problem. Its conceptual and ethical foundations have remained subjects of debate.
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Open question
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How should the record represent the report's relationship to Henry K. Beecher, the other committee members, transplantation, and later legal standards for determining death?