Death

==== Total brain death ====
At present, in most places, the more conservative definition of death&nbsp;(– irreversible cessation of electrical activity in the whole brain, as opposed to just in the neo-cortex&nbsp;– )has been adopted. One example is the [[Uniform Determination Of Death Act]] in the United States.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws |url=https://lchc.ucsd.edu/cogn_150/Readings/death_act.pdf |title=Uniform Determination of Death Act |last2=American Bar Association |last3=American Medical Association |year=1981 |access-date=15 February 2023 |archive-date=26 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230326130414/https://lchc.ucsd.edu/cogn_150/Readings/death_act.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> In the past, the adoption of this whole-brain definition was a conclusion of the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research in 1980.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Lewis|first1=Ariane|last2=Cahn-Fuller|first2=Katherine|last3=Caplan|first3=Arthur|date=March 2017|title=Shouldn't Dead Be Dead?: The Search for a Uniform Definition of Death|journal=The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics|volume=45|issue=1|pages=112–128|doi=10.1177/1073110517703105|pmid=28661278|s2cid=4388540|issn=1073-1105}}</ref> They concluded that this approach to defining death sufficed in reaching a uniform definition nationwide. A multitude of reasons was presented to support this definition, including uniformity of standards in law for establishing death, consumption of a family's fiscal resources for artificial life support, and legal establishment for equating brain death with death to proceed with organ donation.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Sarbey|first=Ben|date=2016-12-01|title=Definitions of death: brain death and what matters in a person|journal=Journal of Law and the Biosciences|volume=3|issue=3|pages=743–752|doi=10.1093/jlb/lsw054|pmid=28852554|pmc=5570697}}</ref>