Statutory Liability for Causing Death

The case for a statutory 'definition of death'.

Karen Quinlan, the American girl who has lain in deep coma for many months, is still 'alive', that is to say, her heart is still beating and brain death has not occurred. However, several other cases have raised difficult issues about the time of death. Dr Skegg argues that there is a case for a legal definition of death enshrined in statutory form. He suggests that many of the objections to a ...

Towards a statutory definition of death in Illinois.

Do urbanicity and familial liability coparticipate in causing psychosis?

OBJECTIVE The urban environment and familial liability are risk factors for psychotic illness, but it is not known whether a biological synergism exists between these two proxy causes. METHOD The amount of biological synergism between familial liability (defined as a family history of delusions and/or hallucinations necessitating psychiatric treatment) and a five-level rating of population de...

On Killing as Causing Death

Common sense has that killing someone amounts to causing the death of someone . This makes killing a physical, biological, or, at best, metaphysical issue, and, as a consequence, the ethics of killing can be dealt with independently of the non-ethical issue of who the killer is . However, in this paper, we show that this is not the case . A physical/biological definition of death plus a metaphy...

Cardiac Sarcoidosis Causing Sudden Death

Sarcoidosis is a granulomatous disease of unclear etiology. Cardiac involvement in sarcoidosis is rarely diagnosed clinically. It is not commonly fatal, but when sarcoidosis is fatal, it is most often from cardiac involvement and when sarcoidosis involves the heart, it frequently causes death. We report a case of sudden death of 48 years male, wherein sarcoidosis with cardiac involvement was di...