the brain death exam. This involves a sequence of tests designed to confirm a suspicion that the brain is not working on any level. There are five features that confirm a diagnosis of death by brain criteria, a few surrogate features that accomplish the same task, and a few that exclude the diagnosis. If you get a perfect score on the brain-death examination—five yeses—you can officially pronounce the patient as dead as Jacob Marley: as dead as a doornail. There is no other neurologic situation in which you would push a body to the extremes that these tests require, in particular, shutting off
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