When Do People Die?

“Is the way we determine death based on a legal construct, a social determination of a biological fact?

Seema Shah, JD, bioethicist at Lurie Children’s Hospital, Chicago, IL (1)

Medical technology has made the determination of death complex, and is posed to increase that complexity by several orders of magnitude.

As noted in the review article in Popular Mechanics, the original determination of death was based on lack of breathing and pulse. Simply, death occurred with the stoppage of the heart.

With the advent of heart transplants, that original definition instantly became obsolete. Doctors could stop the heart, replace it, and restart it and life would continue.

A team of experts proposed added cessation of brain activity to the definition in 1968, and this was subsequently adopted by most US states. As proposed by the Uniform Law Commission in 1980, death became defined as the irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions” OR “the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem.”

Unfortunately, that definition may not work, either.

Back around 2014, a neurologist at Yale discovered that living brain cells could be recovered from supposedly dead brain tissue. Having replicated the recovery of living cells from supposedly dead brain tissue samples, the team went on to develop BrainEx, to tool for reviving brains for dead animals — in this case, animal bodies recovered from a pig slaughterhouse.

Four hours after the pigs had died, neurons were firing, blood vessels were functioning, and the brain’s immune cells were chugging along.

(1)

BrainEx evolved into OrganEx with a focus on reviving entire bodies. OrganEx provides a nuanced approach to cell revival. When dead and dying cells are impacted abruptly by fresh oxygen, the impact itself can cause local trauma and cell death. The more gradual resuscitation of OrganEx provides a greater chance of cell survival.The initial test of this system involved taking pigs what had been dead for one hour and restoring heart and brain function. In the test cases, heart function resumed within 30 minutes of connection to the OrganEx system. There were other signs of resumed biologic activity, including restoration of cellular repair genes.

Most strikingly, the pig subjects showed head movement.

The research suggests that in some cases, recent death is reversible. Right now, the technology is limited to animal studies, but if results continue on the current path, scientists expect the technology to be applied to humans.

Very oddly, could this be the solution for which fans of cryonics have been waiting? Cryonics is the belief in freezing bodies to be brought back to life as solutions to medical issues are identified. Until now there was no way to reanimate a frozen body.

Anyway, that’s speculative. What we know with certainty is that we lack a solid definition of death.

It also give a new meaning to the old 60s rock hit, “The Beat Goes On.”

Sources:

1. Landhuis, Esther, “Is Death Real?” Popular Mechanics, November 24, 2022.
2. https://dnascience.plos.org/2022/08/04/organex-revives-pigs-an-hour-after-death-holding-promise-for-transplants/
3. https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/organex-may-save-donor-organs-by-telling-cells-not-to-die/ar-AA10gqx6