ABSTRACT
The disputes about dying that have reached the general public over the past thirty years show a substantial consensus about the factors to be considered in death decisions: consciousness, prognosis, and suffering. The concept of personhood has a history in many bioethical debates, including those regarding death. It has been presented as an alternative to both brain and cardiac criteria for defining death. At the heart of this consultation model is openness to a more experience near idea of death as the permanent cessation of personhood. Instead of a recitation of 'biomarkers of death', the conversation with family members asks about the person in the hospital bed and about choices he/she would have made, knowing that medicine was out of options. Physicians have used the concept of medical futility in the late stages of terminal illness as a bridge between intervention-based medicine and hospice-based palliative care.
