Hastings Cent Rep
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The concept of "brain life," sometimes offered as the criterion for determining when personhood begins, cannot tell us what we want to know about persons. Neurological facts will not automatically yield ethical conclusions.
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Some patients in intensive care units are too sick to derive much benefit from being there, while others are too well to require the technology and skills offered. When ICU resources are scarce, they may ethically be withdrawn from either sort of patient in favor of one more likely to benefit from the care.