Hastings Center Rep.: The Evolution of Death and Dying Controversies.

• Author: Veatch, Robert M.
• Position: Abstracts - Reprint

When the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences (now the Hastings Center) began its death and dying work in 1970, the first task was to disentangle the definition of death from decisions to forgo life support. We were still in an era when it was often assumed that if one was alive, then health professionals should launch a full-court press to preserve life. The members of the Institute's Task Force on Death and Dying went to work teasing these two questions apart.

Today, forty years after launching The Hastings Center's death and dying research, what we thought would be a short-term controversy in which the brain people would win out over the old-fashioned, romantic, heart-based people has turned into a prolonged debate. We are further from agreement than when we started. In fact, the debate is no longer between just two or three options. Even within the heart, whole-brain, and higher-brain...