To address recent lawsuits that question whether the persistent of hormonal functions is consistent with death by neurologic criteria (such as the case of Jahi McMath), we proposed specific mention in a UDDA that loss of hormonal functions is not required for declaration of death by neurologic criteria.

The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of 12 new fellows. Hastings Center fellows are a group of more than 200 individuals of outstanding accomplishment whose work has...

We believe that the concept of brain death, though flawed in its present application, can be preserved and promoted as a pathway to organ donation, but only after particular changes are made in the medical criteria for its diagnosis.

In recent years, court cases and scholarly articles have increasingly highlighted discrepancies between the legal definition of death in the United States and the medical diagnostic standards for determining brain death. It has become clear to many that the 40-year-old Uniform Determination of Death Act, the legal standard, should be updated.

Edited by Robert D. Truog, Nancy Berlinger, Rachel L. Zacharias, and Mildred Z. Solomon Should death be defined in strictly biological terms — as the body’s failure to maintain integrated functioning...

Defining Death: Organ Transplantation and the 50-Year Legacy of the Harvard Report on Brain Death, the 2018 Harvard Medical School’s Annual Bioethics Conference, took place from April 11 to 13...

“It was like he thought we were dirt.” This is how Jahi McMath’s grandmother, Sandra, describes having been treated by one of the doctors at the Oakland’s Children Hospital ICU....

Hastings Center research scholar Nancy Berlinger and cofounder and President Emeritus Daniel Callahan  participated in a major public workshop on February 12 and 13. “Physician-Assisted Death: Scanning the Landscape and...