Short Note
Version 1
Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
More about the Determination of Death by Neurologic Criteria
Version 1
: Received: 28 February 2020 / Approved: 1 March 2020 / Online: 1 March 2020 (13:28:26 CET)
How to cite: Machado, C. More about the Determination of Death by Neurologic Criteria. Preprints 2020, 2020030014. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202003.0014.v1 Machado, C. More about the Determination of Death by Neurologic Criteria. Preprints 2020, 2020030014. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202003.0014.v1
Abstract
Lewis et al. published an important and timely necessary article about the determination of death by neurological criteria, revising the Uniform Determination of Death.The acceptance of brain death (BD) has been progressively accepted beginning at the late 1950s. Nonetheless, contentious brain-death cases have recently raised new controversies about the diagnosis of BD, such as the Jahi McMath case, extensively covered by the US and international press. Jahi McMath meant a terrible tragedy for her and her family. But further than this gloomy story, the case has also raised confusion and challenging qualms about a fundamental query: how we confirm whether a person is dead or alive? Since 1981, the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) has served as the legal foundation for the medical practice of determining death. But, although death by neurologic criteria is considered legal death throughout the United States, several recent lawsuits have quizzed the rightfulness the authority of the UDDA to declare death by neurological criteria. This issue explains the importance of Lewis’s et al. paper. In this article I want to present the historical procedure for issuing a law in Cuba for the determination and certification of death. Of course, it is impossible to compare our country with USA. Cuba is a small and developing country, in which a law encompasses a national scenery, in contrast with USA, a multistate nation.
Keywords
brain death; determination of death; neurological criteria
Subject
Medicine and Pharmacology, Neuroscience and Neurology
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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