ABSTRACT
The Commission was a United States government organization that, in the 1980s, issued a number of reports with recommendations about controversies in bioethics. Its first report, Defining Death, was designed to provide guidance about when medical professionals should declare an individual dead. The Commission endorsed a “whole brain” criterion for declaring death. The report was used as the basis for a model legislation, the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA), which has been adopted by almost every US state.
