Volume 18, Issue 1 (3-2025)
IJMEHM 2025, 18(1): 0-0 |
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Hosseini Vardaniani S M T, Salami A, Hosseini S M, Mashayekhi J. A Critique of the Jurisprudential-Ethical Foundations of Applying the Term “Death” to the Vegetative State. IJMEHM 2025; 18 (1) : 23
URL: http://ijme.tums.ac.ir/article-1-7031-en.html
URL: http://ijme.tums.ac.ir/article-1-7031-en.html
Sayyed Mohammad Taghi Hosseini Vardaniani1, Ahmad Salami2, Sayyed Morteza Hosseini3, Jannat Mashayekhi *4
1- Researcher, Spiritual Health Research Center, Lifestyle Institute, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
2- Assistant Professor, Department of Islamic Studies, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
3- Associate Professor, Spiritual Health Research Center, Lifestyle Institute, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
4- Assistant Professor, Spiritual Health Research Center, Lifestyle Institute, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
2- Assistant Professor, Department of Islamic Studies, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
3- Associate Professor, Spiritual Health Research Center, Lifestyle Institute, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
4- Assistant Professor, Spiritual Health Research Center, Lifestyle Institute, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Abstract: (207 Views)
The vegetative state is a condition in contemporary medicine that raises numerous ethical, jurisprudential, and legal challenges. The most fundamental question when confronting this condition concerns whether individuals in such a state are considered alive or deceased, as subsequent rulings and implications are typically contingent upon the answer to this question. Some contemporary Islamic jurists, drawing upon the jurisprudential division of life into “stable life” and “unstable life”, have deemed individuals in a vegetative state to be deceased, given their lack of volition and consciousness. This study argues that the concept of “unstable life” does not apply to these individuals, particularly in cases of persistent and chronic vegetative states where the possibility of regaining consciousness, however remote, exists. Furthermore, the continued function of the brainstem and the non-fulfillment of the medical and legal criteria for brain death in many systems affirm that the designation of “deceased” is incorrect. From an Islamic perspective, the definitive separation of the soul from the body, which is the condition for the occurrence of death, cannot be ascertained in the vegetative state. Ultimately, in circumstances of doubt regarding the life or death of a person in a vegetative state, this uncertainty constitutes a “case-specific doubt”, and by applying the legal principle of “presumption of continued life”, the individual must be deemed alive and all the corresponding legal and religious consequences of life must be accorded to them.
Article number: 23
Keywords: Medical ethics, Vegetative state, Life, Death, Unstable life, Presumption of continued life
Type of Study: Research |
Subject:
Medical Jurisprudence
Received: 2025/08/5 | Revised: 2026/02/16 | Accepted: 2025/11/17 | Published: 2025/03/21
Received: 2025/08/5 | Revised: 2026/02/16 | Accepted: 2025/11/17 | Published: 2025/03/21
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