It is Very Hard, However, to Get Informed Consent

Chicago Sun-Times looks at the increasing use of dead bodies in research - not just dead bodies, as in cadavers. "Dead people," as Jim Ritter puts it. His point is that the research that is possible using the newly dead - those whose bodies are still in one way or another functioning despite whole brain death - is expanding and appears to be a sort of new frontier for the testing of more and more devices.

Life-support equipment can keep a cadaver's heart and other organs functioning until a research procedure is completed. Unlike clinical trials on living patients, there's no danger of harming a person with a risky experimental treatment.

For example, researchers could induce an irregular heartbeat in a brain-dead patient and see whether an experimental drug helped restore a normal beat. They also could test new ways to do joint replacement surgery or place breathing tubes.

"There are enormous potential benefits," said Mark Wicclair of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Bioethics and Health Law and West Virginia University philosophy department. "We're probably at a point where it's going to be done more frequently."

Research on the newly dead requires new attention to the sense in which life and the respect for life fade away, rather than dropping off alongside the EEG. So there are guidelines:

The guidelines, written by 15 researchers, ethicists, doctors and patient and religious advocates, were published recently in the journal Nature Medicine. "Respect for persons, a pivotal principle in research ethics, should be extended to the recently dead," the guidelines state.

There's more in the article - description of studies, detail on odd cases in which patients aren't really dead, new modalities that are under such testing.