Hastings Center Report
Defining Death Anew: Reexamining the Twentieth-Century Brain Death Debates and the Uniform Determination of Death Act
The 1981 Uniform Determination of Death Act aimed to unify the legal definition of death across jurisdictions. To gain support for the UDDA, its drafters sidestepped philosophical questions about the relationship between neurologic and circulatory definitions of death. As a result, the UDDA’s definition of death is ambiguous on key issues. To resolve the confusion, we need more clarity about underlying social and philosophical commitments.
