Research ethics
Living patients in a permanent vegetative state as legitimate research subjects
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
S Curry
Department of Philosophy, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Old Quad, University of Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia; E: sbcurry@unimelb.edu.au
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Ravelingien et al1 argue that we should recategorise people in a permanent vegetative state (PVS) as dead. Although the dilemma they describe is very real, their solution will not work. Other respondents to this paper have advanced several powerful arguments against the attempt to describe patients in a PVS as dead. Fortunately, the original argument contains sufficient resources for developing an alternative solution to this dilemma without having to radically change the current legal or social status of patients in a PVS. In fact, patients in a PVS may be enrolled in xenotransplantation experiments, provided that their prior informed consent has been sought.
The motivation for the original paper was to resolve an apparently intractable ethical conflict. On the one hand, there are powerful ethical and medical reasons for proceeding with research into the transplantation of non-human organs into human patients, whereas on the other, there are equally powerful ethical
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
-
Levy, N, Ravelingien, A, Braeckman, J, Mortier, F, Mortier, E, Kerremans, I
(2006). Respecting rights ... to death.. J. Med. Ethics
32: 608-611
[Full Text]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
-
Transplantation
-
Artificial and donated transplantation
-
Ethics of reproduction
-
Informed consent
- Legal and forensic medicine
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
