A leading Saudi medical expert, known in the global scientific community for his pioneering research in cardiology, has called on the Kingdom’s Islamic scholars to revise their ruling on terminating the life of a person who is “clinically dead” or “brain dead.” “As long as a patient’s heart is beating there is no reason for us to take him or her off the ventilator,” said Dr. Abdullah A. Abdulgader, director of the Prince Sultan Cardiac Center in Al-Hasa. Abdulgader said his view is based on research carried out by top cardiologists who are attending a three-day international conference on advanced cardiac sciences in Saudi Arabia. According to a fatwa issued in the Kingdom 22 years ago and which is still the guiding principle in cases of terminally ill patients, a person who is in coma and is declared as clinically dead or brain dead should be disconnected from the ventilator. This essentially means that the patient’s beating heart should be allowed to die. The fatwa, approved by the Kingdom’s top religious authority, was based in large part on the advice of the medical community. “Twenty-two years ago we did not know what we know now,” explained Abdulgader.
NEW FATWA ON BRAIN DEAD NEEDED
A leading Saudi medical expert, known in the global scientific community for his pioneering research in cardiology, has called on the Kingdom’s Islamic scholars to revise their ruling on terminating the life of a person who is “clinically dead” or “brain dead.”
