What defines death?

[D.B. Cooper]

Simple answer? I THINK NOT!

I recently had a small bioethics seminar, which I found very fascinating. Talking about clinical equipoise, informed consent, and other things. One topic which got me thinking was the proper definition of death. The definition used to be, some time in the 1800s I believe, "not breathing". Then it was "no pulse". Then it became "total body death" i.e. all your organs were no longer functional. More recently it became "brain death", meaning your brain can't control your body and you need a machine to keep you alive, and more specifically "higher brain death" and "total brain death". Total brain death is, well, you need a machine to keep you alive. Higher brain death is inability to speak, think, or otherwise have conscious thought. You're still breathing and alive.

Of higher brain death and total brain death, which is more sensible? It was decided, in the US at least and other such countries, that "total brain death" was in fact total death. I disagree. If your brain and body are no longer useful, if you can no longer do anything or even think the most basic of thoughts, you're as good as dead.

Please discuss.

[Playfishpaste]

Total brain death is death. If you are still capable of breathing, or anything of that sort, that means there are some cells in your body that are still functional, meaning you are still a living organism. Dead cells means a dead organism. All of your cells must die for you to be dead.

[Cluny the Scourge]

Cessation of all electrical activity in the brain-stem. Failures in other parts of the brain are not sufficient. Neither are any other organic effects in the body, e.g. heart stalling, breathing ceasing.

It's that simple.

[Playfishpaste]

Cluny, all that means is you stop thinking and your body stops functioning. It doesn't make you non-living material. The only way that could possibly happen is total brain death.

[Cluny the Scourge]

Cluny, all that means is you stop thinking and your body stops functioning. It doesn't make you non-living material. The only way that could possibly happen is total brain death.

Wrong. If activity ceases in the brain-stem the person is dead.

If you are using life-support machines to force his or her heart and lungs to keep operating, then the remainder of their body will still be living tissue - but it will not be that person any more than is growth in a petri-dish.

When activity ceases in the brain-stem there is nothing retrievable, nor will there ever be any form of medical technology - short of some kind of bizarre time-travelling wormhole device that could extract consciousness-patterns from the past into a new body - that will make it retrievable. When the brain-stem goes dead, the person is dead.

[Chaigidel]

they are currently doing tests with dying volunteers -- -the machine will know the ways of death then it may be awakened !

seriously though pretty cool Ill find link if I can

[hellas1]

Hi all,

For me there are 3 kinds of death:

1. Physical death: Total Brain functioning

2. Psychological death: The ending of the conditioned "me" or ego.

3. Spiritual death: When the spirit or "our heart of hearts" abides in evil/wickedness and does not choose to turn the opposite direction to do that which is right, beautiful, selfless (Note: God's Love is right, beautiful and selfless).

If you'd like to discuss this on a Christian level, that's one thing.
Jewish, another. Buddhist yet another and Esoterically (Theosophically/Anthroposophically speaking ONLY) yet another viewpoint.

So long,
hellas1

[Playfishpaste]

Yes, that is right, but this thread is about the definition of death. Death is the state an organism is in when it is non-living. Since an organism is composed of quite a few organic systems, it cannot be truly dead until all of them do not function. Though in clinical terms, the death of the brain stem would make us legally consider a dude dead.