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Should you define your own death?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Robert Veatch weighs his words carefully when he talks about how people pass away. Most simply die. Some "become dead". Others are "made dead".
Some end-of-life cases are so unclear, he thinks, that people should be able to choose in advance the definition of death they want to be used to declare them deceased.
"Most ordinary people, including most physicians, assume whether you're dead or alive is a science question," Veatch, a Georgetown University medical ethics professor who has lectured about death and dying for over three decades, told Reuters.
