From the heart of the world

From the Heart of the World—The Elder Brothers’ Warning. Director: Alan Ereira; camera: Bill Broomfield; editor: Horacio Queiro; sound: John Wills. 1990, color, 87minutes VHS‐NTSC, VHS‐PAL. English narration and subtitles. Distributed by BBC Enterprises, 80 Wood Lane, London W12 OTT; or Mystic Fire Video, 225 Lafayette Street, Suite 1206, New York 10012; sale only, £12 or $29.95 + $4.00 postage. Ereira, Alan, The Heart of the World. London: Jonathan Cape, 1990, bibliography, index, 288 pp., £15.99.     

Book Review

Neurology and Neurobiology; Vol. 5: The Physiology of Excitable Cells edited by Alan D. Grinnell and William J. Moody, Jr. Alan R. Liss, New York, 1983, 620 pp., ISBN 0-8451-2704-7, $72.     

Integrated But Not Whole? Applying an Ontological Account of Human Organismal Unity to the Brain Death Debate

As is clear in the 2008 report of the President's Council on Bioethics, the brain death debate is plagued by ambiguity in the use of such key terms as ‘integration’ and ‘wholeness’. Addressing this problem, I offer a plausible ontological account of organismal unity drawing on the work of Hoffman and Rosenkrantz, and then apply that account to the case of brain death, concluding that a brain dead body lacks the unity proper to a human organism, and has therefore undergone a substantial change. I also show how my view can explain hard cases better than one in which biological integration (as understood by Alan Shewmon and the President's Council) is taken to imply ontological wholeness or unity.     

Total brain death: a reply to Alan Shewmon

D. Alan Shewmon has advanced a well-documented challenge to the widely accepted total brain death criterion for death of the human being. We show that Shewmon’s argument against this criterion is unsound, though he does refute the standard argument for that criterion. We advance a distinct argument for the total brain death criterion and answer likely objections. Since human beings are rational animals--sentient organisms of a specific type--the loss of the radical capacity for sentience (the capacity to sense or to develop the capacity to sense) involves a substantial change, the passing away of the human organism. In human beings total brain death involves the complete loss of the radical capacity for sentience, and so in human beings total brain death is death.     

Book Reviews

Senile Dementia: Outlook for the Future (Modern Aging Research, Vol. 5) edited by J. Wertheimer and M. Marois. Alan R. Liss
Nucleic Acid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology by W. I. P. Mainwaring, J. H. Parish, J. D. Pickering, and N. H. Mann.
Modulation of Sensorimotor Activity During Alterations in Behavioural States edited by R. Bandler. Alan R. Liss
Monoamine Innervation of Cerebral Cortex (Neurology and Neurobiolgy, Vol. 10) edited by L. Descarries, T. R. Reader, and H. H. Jasper, Alan R. Liss
Neurocommunications: An Introduction by I. C. Whitfield
Ionic Channels of Excitable Membranes by B. Hille
Metabolic Probes of Central Nervous System Activity in Experimental Animals and Man (Magnes Lecture Series, Vol. 1) by Louis Sokoloff
Neurobiology (The Clinical Neurosciences, Vol. V) edited by R. N. Rosenberg, R. G. Grossman, S. S. Schochet Jr., E. R. Heinz, W. D. Willis Jr.     

Book Reviews

Book reviews in this article:
Pineal Research Reviews, Volume 4 edited by R. J. Reiter. Alan R. Liss.
Two Hemispheres—One Brain. Functions of the Corpus Callosum (Neurology and Neurobiology, Volume 17) edited by F. Lepore, M. Ptito, and H. H. Jasper. Alan R. Liss.
Molecular and Cellular Mechanisms of Anesthetics edited by S. H. Roth and K. W. Miller.
Memory, Imprinting and the Brain: An Inquiry into Mechanisms (Oxford Psychology Series, Volume 10) by G. Horn.     

Decoding the epigenetic effects of chromatin

A report on the Alan Wolffe EMBO Workshop on 'Chromatin and Epigenetics', Heidelberg, Germany, 19-22 June 2003.     

Mesoamerican Healers

Mesoamerican Healers. Brad R. Huber and Alan R. Sandstrom. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001. 403 pp.     

Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore

Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore. Alan Dundes. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1999. 131 pp.     

Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos

Baseball on the Border:. Tale of Two Laredos. Alan M. Klein. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.291 pp.     

Spirits in Culture, History, and Mind

Spirits in Culture, History, and Mind. Jeannette Marie Mageo and Alan Howard. eds. New York: Routledge, 1996. 282 pp.     

Intermediate Elites in Pre-Columbian States and Empires

Intermediate Elites in Pre-Columbian States and Empires . Christina M. Elson and R. Alan Covey, eds. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2006. 312 pp.     

The Anthropology of Love and Anger: The Aesthetics of Conviviality in Native Amazonia

The Anthropology of Love and Anger: The Aesthetics of Conviviality in Native Amazonia. Joanna Overing and Alan Passes. eds. London: Routledge, 2000. 305 pp.     

Phonologies of Asia and Africa, vols. 1 and 2.

Phonologies of Asia and Africa, vols. and 2. Alan S. Kaye. ed. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997. 1,041 pp.     

International Folkloristics: Classical Contributions by the Founders of Folklore

International Folkloristics: Classical Contributions by the Founders of Folklore. Alan Dundes. ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999. 257 pp.     

Whispers on the Color Line: Rumor and Race in America.

Whispers on the Color Line: Rumor and Race in America. Gary Alan Fine and Patricia A. Turner. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. 270 pp.     

The Shaping of American Ethnography: The Wilkes Exploring Expedition, 1832–1842

The Shaping of American Ethnography: The Wilkes Exploring Expedition, 1832–1842. Barry Alan Joyce. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001,196 pp.     

Faunal Extinction in an Island Society: Pygmy Hippopotamus Hunters of Cyprus

Faunal Extinction in an Island Society: Pygmy Hippopotamus Hunters of Cyprus. Alan H. Simmons and Associates. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 1999. 381 pp.     

Between Artifacts and Texts: Historical Archaeology in Global Perspective

Between Artifacts and Texts: Historical Archaeology in Global Perspective. Anders Andrén. Translated by Alan Crozier. New York: Plenum, 1998. 216 pp.     

Living and Working with the New Medical Technologies

Living and Working with the New Medical Technologies. Margaret Lock, Alan Young, and Alberto, Cambrosio, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 295 pp.