Death, Dying, and Organ Transplantation: Reconstructing Medical Ethics at the End of Life

In Death, Dying, and Organ Transplantation: Reconstructing Medical Ethics at the End of Life, Miller and Truog challenge fundamental doctrines of established medical ethics. They argue that the routine practice of stopping life support technology in hospitals causes the death of patients and that donors of vital organs (hearts, lungs, liver, and both kidneys) are not really dead at the time that their organs are removed for life-saving transplantation. These practices are ethically legitimate but are not compatible with traditional rules of medical ethics that doctors must not intentionally cause the death of their patients and that vital organs can be obtained for transplantation only from dead donors.


About the Author
Franklin G. Miller, Ph.D. is retired from the senior faculty in the Department of Bioethics, National Institutes of Health and currently Professor of Medical Ethics in Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. Miller has published a book of his selected essays, The Ethical Challenges of Human Research, edited six books, and published numerous articles in medical and bioethics journals on the ethics of clinical research, death and dying, professional integrity, pragmatism and bioethics, and the placebo effect. Dr. Miller is a fellow of the Hastings Center and Associate Editor of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine.

Robert D. Truog, MD. is the Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Medical Ethics, Anaesthesia, & Pediatrics and Director of the Center for Bioethics, both at Harvard Medical School. He has practiced pediatric intensive care medicine at Boston Children's Hospital for more than 25 years.