Death

[Enigma'07]

What is the biological definition of death? I'm confussed because thousand of cells die each day, but overall the organism remains alive.

[greywolf]

When all bodily functions cease to function!

[Enigma'07]

Hair and fingernails grow, or is that not bodily?

[greywolf]

Sorry! wasnt specific. All bodily functions that acually keep you alive.

BTW- how long (time not length) do they grow after death?

[sargentlard]

When metabolism stops in a living being.

[Facial]

When an organism ceases to function in a state of ever-increasing entropy.

[hotsexyangelprincess]

when you're not gonna come alive again :m:

[cyberia]

actually your hair and finger nails don't keep growing. But the skin on your scalp and fingers shrink giving it the appearance there of.

Do you think that technically we could find the cure for death?
Because death is caused by failure of the organs, usually they wear out or are damaged. So if the wearing out process could be checked death could be held at bay infinitly. Because theoretically the cells would continually reproduce but its the overall structure of the organs that fails.

[hotsexyangelprincess]

what about cryongenically freezing people? does that count as death? :m:

[cyberia]

no its stasis, like putting someone on pause.

Although usually the people are dead when this happens o.o

[hotsexyangelprincess]

yeah, i wonder what would happen if you were concsious during cryo, like all the old science fiction novels. probably be really boring. :m:

[cyberia]

fucking cold is what it would be, if my opinion. Maybe they could give you like a movie to watch until your brain shuts down.

[invert_nexus]

actually your hair and finger nails don't keep growing. But the skin on your scalp and fingers shrink giving it the appearance there of.

Sure about that? I think it's a combination of the two. It takes several days for the effects of death to fully work it's way down the structures of the body. And, the bacterial hitchhikers of our digestive tract actually thrive upon our death. They eat us.

no its stasis, like putting someone on pause.

If you call ice crystals destroying your cell membranes stasis, then... I don't think they've come up with a decent cryoprotectant yet anyway. Have they? I think they're still banking on the future coming up with the means to restore the damaged cells of those frozen today. Like the future would really want to ressurect all the losers from our time. :p Maybe a couple for research purposes, but I doubt they'd want all of them.

yeah, i wonder what would happen if you were concsious during cryo, like all the old science fiction novels. probably be really boring.

Quite painful, I'd imagine. The nazi's did freezing experiments.


To answer the main question (in my limited fashion as I'm not a medical examiner) I think it's brain death that is the operative factor. I saw a show on Discovery a long time ago about death. It said how the body actually lives a few days after "death" (here and there). It's the brain that's important. Specifically the autonomic functions, I should think. Heart beating, lungs breathing, etc... When the body cannot do these things on their own then you're dead. You can be kept "alive" artificially sometimes, and sometimes these people actually snap out of it eventually.

Basically, there is no standard definition of dead. It's a judgement call made by a doctor. Nothing more.

By the way, did you know that if you die and no one finds you for a long time, you liquify and can even soak through the floor until the downstairs neighbors actually see you dripping into their apartment. Gross stuff. Costly to repair the damage too.

[vslayer]

if we were living on stemm cells then immortality would become possible

[spuriousmonkey]

if we were living on stemm cells then immortality would become possible

how?

[invert_nexus]

Christopher Reeve lived on stem cells in a South Park episode. By the end, he was just ripping babies heads off and drinking straight from their necks... Maybe that's what vslayer's referring to... :D

Seriously though, maybe not immortality but perhaps longevity. Bring on the headless clone farms.

[spuriousmonkey]

I always ask how, because I am in the stem cell field myself and I always hear this bullshit on how stem cells can magically increase lifespan or enable the cloning of organs.

In fact it is just propaganda used for grant applications and press releases.

[invert_nexus]

So you're saying that headless clone farms are a fantasy? :( What about spinal cord damage. I've heard that stem cells might allow nerve cells to fuse back together. I have seen research on bad hearts. Injected it with stem cells and a few weeks later or however long it may have been. The damage to the heart was practically wiped out.

[spuriousmonkey]

. I have seen research on bad hearts. Injected it with stem cells and a few weeks later or however long it may have been. The damage to the heart was practically wiped out.

Where did the stem cells come from?

[invert_nexus]

Not sure, I'm tryin to remember where I saw this at. Was it in a magazine or on tv...? I imagine that they probably didn't really specify. I'll try to find it, though.

[invert_nexus]

I don't feel like going through my stack of magazines to try to find the article (I'm almost positive that's where it came from either Discover or Scientific American.) So, I did a web search. Found a bunch of links.

In the latest advance, Victor Dzau and his colleagues at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston inserted a cell-survival gene called Akt1 into a type of bone-marrow stem cell. They injected the cells into rats whose hearts had been starved of oxygen as happens when blocked arteries cause a heart attack.

More than 60% of the modified cells survived for 48 hours. What's more, they halted the heart's subsequent decline towards failure. "It's pretty amazing," says Stanton Gerson, who studies blood stem cells at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/030804/030804-15.html

Found a few others that all seemed to talk about the same thing. Using bone marrow stem cells rather than embryonic stem cells.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/conditions/03/06/teen.heart.ap/

None of these are the ones that I saw before though. The one I saw showed a before and after picture of the heart. Showed how much healthier the muscle was after the procedure. I really don't think it said where the stem cells came from. I'd be willing to bet that it's these same stem cells though.

[cosmictraveler]

When all brain activity ceases , that's when your clinicly dead.

[invert_nexus]

Found some more:

What has increasingly been found is extensive fusion of bone marrow stem cells to cells in the heart, liver and brain, offering an alternative explanation for the presumed transdifferentiation. In future studies of adult stem cell potential, it will be crucial to rule out the possibility that stem cells are merely fusing to local cells rather than generating new ones.

Still, tissue-specific cells have already produced encouraging results. In the German TOPCARE-AMI study of patients with severe heart damage following myocardial infarction, the patients' own heart progenitor cells were infused directly into the infarcted artery. Four months later the size of the damaged tissue swath had decreased by nearly 36 percent, and the patients' heart function had increased by 10 percent.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000DFA43-04B1-10AA-84B183414B7F0000&pageNumber=5&catID=2

But, I think their source was:
Regeneration of the Infarcted Heart with Stem Cells Derived by Nuclear Transplantation. Robert Lanza et al. in Circulation Research, Vol. 94, pages 820-927; April 2, 2004.
Which would probably suit you better.

This still isn't the same one I saw, but I bet it's telling the same story.

[vslayer]

I always ask how, because I am in the stem cell field myself and I always hear this bullshit on how stem cells can magically increase lifespan or enable the cloning of organs.

In fact it is just propaganda used for grant applications and press releases.

but the reason we die is beacuse or body degenerates, if we had stemcells constantly converting themselves into penis cells whenever a penis cell died then we would live forever(sorry about the example but i am a guy and thats what first cam to mind)

[John Connellan]

Only as long as at least half the stem cells do not differentiate.

[vslayer]

as long as the stem cells took the form of whatever died, then you could replace the entrie ting

[vslayer]

its like putting gap filler in when u lose a brick in a wall, eventually you can have a whole wall of gapfiller(new cells)

[Facial]

When all brain activity ceases , that's when your clinicly dead.

Is that how they define it? Interesting...

[John Connellan]

as long as the stem cells took the form of whatever died, then you could replace the entrie ting

Yes but u wouldn't live forever unless the stem cells were replaced continuously.

[vslayer]

as i said, "if you ate stemcells instead of food"

[curioucity]

I started a question long ago about which part of the body is more important, brain or heart, and I think (after some time and discussion) death=no brain order (or dead brain)

[John Connellan]

If u ATE the stem cells then they would be useless, silly! Auto-cannibalism I believe :D

[spuriousmonkey]

but the reason we die is beacuse or body degenerates, if we had stemcells constantly converting themselves into penis cells whenever a penis cell died then we would live forever(sorry about the example but i am a guy and thats what first cam to mind)

You mean we would have cancer everywhere?

[Blindman]

Death is the end of a system. When analogies that existed no longer apply. When orbits decay, when motion stops or starts, when thing change to a point that previous descriptions no longer apply. Death is subjective.

[ElectricFetus]

There was this episode of South Park when their in the rainforest and a snake eats there tour guide and is pooping out the digested remains when the instructor yells out: “oh my god is he dead?”

your dead when people argee that your dead.

[invert_nexus]

"Getting gay with kids is here. Saving the rainforest is totally GAY!"

Heh, good point Fetus. I never really thought of her saying that. It is a funny thing to say when he's being shat out, isn't it? :D Death is subjective. It's a judgement call. Some people are declared dead while they're still alive and they have a lot of trouble convincing the state that they are in fact "not dead".

[ElectricFetus]

It is a funny thing to say when he's being shat out, isn't it? :D Death is subjective. It's a judgement call. Some people are declared dead while they're still alive and they have a lot of trouble convincing the state that they are in fact "not dead".

no its Hell-a funny! :D

I remember hearing of that article about a man that had to prove he was alive, do you know where a link would be for it?

[invert_nexus]

Nope, don't have any examples. I've just heard it as the old urban myth type thing. I do remember an episode of the Simpsons where Homer faked his own death...

[Dreamwalker]

Well, as far as I know, such occurences are not simply urban myths. It seems that after some time of unaccounted absence of yourself without any trace, you are considered dead after some time by the state. And when you get back, you have to verify that you are indeed you. This you either do with a valid ID (which might be difficult since they run out after some years) or with reliable wittnesses. But I don´t know the details, and it varies from country to country.

[Phantom]

When all brain activity ceases , that's when your clinicly dead.

Yes, thats true....

By definition, "brain death" is "when the entire brain, including the brain stem, has irreversibly lost all function." The legal time of death is "that time when a physician(s) has determined that the brain and the brain stem have irreversibly lost all neurological function."

http://health.howstuffworks.com/brain-death1.htm


The positive examination for brain death includes the following:

The patient has no response to command, verbal, visual or otherwise.

The patient is flaccid, with areflexic extremities. The patient has no movements -- the arms and legs are raised and allowed to fall to see if there are adjacent movements, restraint or hesitation in the fall.

The pupils are unreactive (fixed). The patient's eyes are opened and a very bright light is shined into the pupil. The light will activate the optic nerve and send a message to the brain. In the normal brain, the brain will send an impulse back to the eye to constrict the pupil. In the non-viable brain, no impulse will be generated. This is performed in both eyes.

The patient has no oculocephalic reflex. The patient's eyes are opened and the head turned from side to side. The active brain will allow a roving motion of the eyes; the non-functional brain will not. The eyes remain fixed.

The patient has no corneal reflexes. A cotton swab is dragged across the cornea while the eye is held open. The intact brain will want the eye to blink. The dead brain will not. This is performed in both eyes.

The patient has no response -- either purposeful or posturing -- to supra-orbital stimulation. The patient's eyebrow ridge is compressed with the thumb. The resulting stimulation pressure will cause motion of the extremities, either purposeful or primitive posturing, in the living-brain patient, but none in the brain-dead patient.

The patient has no oculovestibular reflex. The patient's ear canal is inspected to ensure an intact tympanic membrane and that the ear is free of wax. While holding the eyes open, ice water is injected into the ear canal. The drastic change in ear temperature will cause a violent eye twitching by the intact brain but no reaction in the brain-dead patient. This is performed in both ears.

The patient has no gag reflex. The movement of the breathing tube (in and out) or the insertion of a smaller tube down the breathing tube will cause a gag reflex in a comatose patient, but will not elicit a reflex in the brain-dead patient.

The patient has no spontaneous respiration. The patient is temporarily removed from life support (the ventilator). With the cessation of breathing by the machine, the body will immediately start to build up metabolic waste of carton dioxide (CO2) in the blood. When the CO2 level reaches a level of 55 mm Hg, the active brain will cause the patient to breathe spontaneously. The dead brain gives no response.

If, after this extensive clinical examination, the patient shows no sign of neurological function and the cause of the injury is known, the patient can be pronounced "brain dead." In some states, more than one physician is required to make this pronouncement in order for brain death to become legal death.

[Blindman]

A good scientific explication of a human death, but only humans. I would hope that some element of the possibility of repair can fall into the equation.

This will do for now, but future tech will have to reach a deeper meaning, Because to the physicians death means beyond the ability to revive.

And animal death has a far more undefined boundary. Death is when you cant be bothered reviving.

A car dies when it is totaled, as in, it cost more to fix then to buy a new one.

[vslayer]

imagine someone with catalepsy trying to prove they are alive, lol