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OBJECTIVE: To examine attitudes toward death criteria and their relation to attitudes and behaviors regarding organ donation. DATA SOURCES: This article reviews empirical studies on the attitudes of healthcare personnel and the general public regarding death criteria and organ donation. STUDY SELECTION AND DATA EXTRACTION: The review was restricted to studies that had as a primary focus attitudes toward 1 or more of the following 3 specific criteria for determining death: (1) brain death, the irreversible loss of all functions of the entire brain; (2) higher brain death, the loss of cerebral cortex function alone; and (3) the circulatory-respiratory criteria commonly used in donation after cardiac death. DATA SYNTHESIS: Studies consistently show that the general public and some medical personnel are inadequately familiar with the legal and medical status of brain death; attitudes toward the dead donor rule are strong predictors of willingness to donate organs using controversial criteria; concerns about donation after cardiac death surround the withdrawal of life support more than the actual death criteria used; and concerns about death criteria correlate with less favorable attitudes toward organ donation. CONCLUSIONS: Both general and ethical education may serve to guide policy and facilitate family member requests and informed consent dialogues. Furthermore, helping families to understand and accept not only medical and legal criteria for determining death, but also ethical criteria for withdrawing life support may help them be more comfortable with their decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monshi and Zieglmayer's case study presents Sri Lankan participants as having views on the privacy of health information that differ radically from those commonly found in Western nations. This article explores 2 questions that their case study raises for the ethical review of research in international settings: First, are allegedly universal ethical principlesof the sort promulgated in the Belmont Report (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1978)useful in international settings', and second, how should research oversight bodies address the challenges that arise in international behavioral and social science research? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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