Ethicist seeks law to say when dead is truly dead (Canada)

"A new trend to harvest transplant organs from people whose hearts have just stopped - but may not be yet brain dead - has underlined the "pressing need" for federal legislation to define exactly when someone has perished, a leading medical ethicist argues. Canada has an assortment of case law and legislation defining end of life, but the growing use of organs from cardiac-death patients may violate the law, argues Jocelyn Downie of Dalhousie University in a recent journal paper. Health-care workers motivated simply by the desire to help seriously ill patients are at risk of civil or even criminal court action because of the lack of a clear definition, she says in the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia. The cardiac-death protocol, meanwhile, should probably be halted until more is known about when someone whose heart has stopped is beyond recovery, Prof. Downie said" - leader-Post