Brain Death: Ethical Considerations (SCIENCE AND SOCIETY

by Douglas N. Walton

The traditional equation of the death of a person with irreversible cessation of cardio respiratory function -- the absence of heartbeat, pulse, or respiration -- is being replaced by modern medicine with a definition of death in terms of irreversible destruction of function-brain death. In this book, the author thoughtfully and analytically surveys and evaluates the arguments for and against equating the death of a person with brain death. The ethical issues -- both theoretical and practical -- are explored against a rich and comprehensive background of current medical thought and practice and the most recent legal reasoning and opinion.

95 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Douglas Neil Walton (PhD University of Toronto, 1972) is a Canadian academic and author, well known for his many widely published books and papers on argumentation, logical fallacies and informal logic. He is presently Distinguished Research Fellow of the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation, and Rhetoric (CRRAR) at the University of Windsor, Canada, and before that (2008-2014), he held the Assumption Chair of Argumentation Studies at the University of Windsor. Walton’s work has been used to better prepare legal arguments and to help develop artificial intelligence. His books have been translated worldwide, and he attracts students from many countries to study with him. A special issue of the journal Informal Logic surveyed Walton’s contributions to informal logic and argumentation theory up to 2006 (Informal Logic, 27(3), 2007). A festschrift honoring his contributions, Dialectics, Dialogue and Argumentation: An Examination of Douglas Walton’s Theories of Reasoning and Argument, ed. C. Reed and C. W. Tindale, London: College Publications, 2010, shows how his theories are increasingly finding applications in computer science. A list of titles of many of Walton’s books is given below. Links to preprints of many of his published papers can be found on the website

http://www.dougwalton.ca