The political economy of death and the history of its criteria.
This paper argues for a constitutive link between ecologies of social interests and the social receptivity, if not also the formation, of some recent criteria of death. It maintains that these criteria have been embraced by ecologies that have been dominated by certain economic interests in pronouncing some patients dead. Moreover, the very same ecologies have also embraced philosophical representations of those criteria, but only such that were able to conceal these interests and thereby legitimize and reaffirm their hegemony. Based on this observation, the paper concludes that the current criteria of death and their philosophical representations are ideological constructs in the strict Marxian sense. They may or may not be 'really' true, but they are 'necessarily false' in one respect: they owe their social status to the fact that their self-professed role-pronouncing dead those who are dead-is not in accord with their objective, i.e., social, role-pronouncing dead those who should be dead.
Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK. m.epstein@qmul.ac.uk
Miran
M
Epstein
D001926:Brain Death; D003643:Death; D004470:Economics, Medical / Q000266:history / Q000592:standards; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D006801:Humans; D010684:Philosophy / Q000266:history*