This week’s issues of the two leading U.S. medical journals have prominent sections which fall under the “medicine and society” rubric.

The New England Journal of Medicine is running a series of articles on organ donation and the ethics surrounding the use of “cardiac death” — rather than “brain death” — as a criteria for determining the point of death. The central article in the series is a report of heart transplants carried out on three infants, and it is accompanied by commentaries and a round-table discussion (available as a video) between bioethicists Arthur Caplan, Robert Truog and George Annas, moderated by Atul Gawande. The Washington Post also has a report on this story here.

The Journal of the American Medical Association is running a special issue on violence and human rights, with articles on topics ranging from mental health among former child soldiers in Nepal to domestic violence and HIV-infection among married women in India.