Talking about death is not the same as communicating about death

Just like people from a tropical climate who have migrated to the arctic, notes Shewmon, we have recently migrated into a world in which medical technology allows us to stretch out a dying process that used to take place all at once. Because the simple concept and word for 'death' are outd...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of medical ethics 2015-04, Vol.41 (4), p.303-303
Main Author: Youngner, Stuart J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitude to Death
Bioethics
Brain Death
Clinical ethics
Death
Female
Humans
Informed Consent
Male
Public Opinion
Society
Studies
Tissue and Organ Harvesting - ethics
Tissue and Organ Procurement
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Summary:Just like people from a tropical climate who have migrated to the arctic, notes Shewmon, we have recently migrated into a world in which medical technology allows us to stretch out a dying process that used to take place all at once. Because the simple concept and word for 'death' are outdated, terms such as 'biologically dead', 'clinically dead', 'irreversibly dead', 'dead because a moral choice was made not to intervene', 'legally dead', 'biographically dead' and 'socially dead' appear regularly and often interchangeably in clinical, academic and public discourse. The authors of the study from Florida State indirectly acknowledge the magnitude of the linguistic problem when they try to explain why one of their own findings seriously undermines their conclusion that abandoning the dead donor rule may not be out of touch with public opinion. 2 Taking this limitation into account, how do academics effectively educate and communicate about death with a public that seems content with the status quo?
ISSN:0306-6800
1473-4257
DOI:10.1136/medethics-2014-102460