There is an article in one of the local papers mentioning the passing of a young woman last week.
A quote from the paper… “Burkhead, 22, died from natural causes while visiting friends in Wast Lansing, Michigan”. No other mention of cause of death.
Is “natural causes” a catch all description for “we don’t know why she died”? I connect “natural causes” with the older folks, apparently incorrectly.
Can someone offer up an explanation?
Natural causes as in not murder or accident. In a death notice they usually won’t go into any detail to spare the family any further greif. The person maybe had an aneurysm or a congenital defect. It happens.
No, it’s not a catch-all term for “we don’t know why she died”, but it is a catch-all term for “she didn’t die as a result of trauma, poisoning, etc.”
A heart attack is natural causes, as is a stroke, cancer, kidney failure, and other disease processes. Young people tend not to have strokes and heart attacks and various organ failures, or at least they have these things in much smaller proportions than older folks, so they’re less likely to die from them. Young people are thus more likely to be victims of accident or homicide than to die of natural causes.
Thanks.
I have read other stories in newspapers where cancer, “long term illness” that sort of thing might be mentioned. I guess this is a way to focus less on her death and more on her life (which is what this particular story was about).
I don’t know if its a suicide, they probably wouldn’t have mentioned anything had that been the case. They would’ve just said ‘passed away’.
Perhaps he had some anomaly that killed him young.
If she’s the person I’m thinking of, according to newspaper reports I’ve read, it’s a stretch to call it natural causes. The theory (as put forth in the campus newspaper) was that she fell and hit her head while getting up during the night - while there was no evidence of foul play or drugs, an accident still seems like it’s stretching the definition of “natural causes”.
The coroner’s report is trustworthy. The information in the paper… not so trustworthy. I once saw a funeral home director call the paper and lie through his teeth, saying “natural causes” when the real cause of death was “hung himself with a sturdy yellow nylon rope”.
Otherwise referred to as “(extreme) shortness of breath.”
The proper funeral director term is “suddenly.”
Yep. Suicide = “died suddenly.” 
Or died suddenly can mean just that. One minute, he’s chatting to you. The next, he’s lying dead on the floor…
Priest to woman: Did he have any last words?
Woman: Yes Father. He said, “For the love of God Marjorie, put down that gun!”
A grade school classmate of mine died in her 20s of a brain aneurysm, in her sleep. The newspaper obituary called it “natural causes.”
“Suddenly” can also mean the person died quickly of uncertain causes. In such cases, the body of the deceased will be taken to the coroner, who does an autopsy and collects bodily fluids for lab analysis. The body is then released to the family. It can take days for tox results to be completed, and even longer before the coroner actually issues a report with the cause of death. I run website about the drug dextromethorphan (DXM), http://www.dextromethorphan.ws. Following up a lead about a possible DXM death earlier this year, I called the coroner identifying myself as a reporter and asked about the listed cause of death. I was told that DXM was indeed involved, and requested they send me a copy of the coroner’s report. Based on that, I wrote the news report at WEBSITE.WS - Your Internet Address For Life™.
The coroner did a surprisingly thorough autopsy. He even cut out the unfortunate deceased’s heart and brain and weighed them. It is very clear from the coroner’s report that the actual cause of death wasn’t known until the detailed tox results came in days later. When the funeral was held, certainly all that was known was that he “died suddenly”. I even found his sister’s website where she had stated that her brother died from a brain aneurysm from DXM abuse. This was totally inaccurate. This wasn’t found in the autopsy. No specific mechanism of death is listed, but from my advanced knowledge about the drugs almost certainly it was respiratory depression leading to asphyxiation. I e-mailed his sister with a link to my news report of her brother’s death, and pointed out while it was drugs that killed him, he didn’t die that way. (I of course was tactful enough to leave out all the gory details revealed in the autopsy, and just cut to the chase.) She e-mailed me back and thanked me, and even put a correction on her website.
The reality is that when people die unexpectedly, the grief stricken family isn’t all that concerned about accurate reporting of the death. “Died suddenly” is sufficient. Little surprise to me. Only a reporter with a scientific bent tend to care more. Although, there are exceptions.
http://www.dextromethorphan.ws/dxmdeaths.htm
Read the first death report there. The dead guy’s sister actually wanted me to report the truth about her brother’s death. I promised I would if she provided proof. She did privately, and thus that news report I wrote. (She asked that I not report his real name. I pointed out that people might call me a liar if I didn’t. She said if that happend it would be OK to report it. Nobody at the time questioned that news report. At this late date, I’ll let things lie.) I find it truly embarassing I have that Neil Young quote in there. Lousy journalism, but I at the time wasn’t emotionally objective.
There are several “natural causes” that can kill a 22 year old. Berry aneurysm and heart arrhythmia syndromes (long QT and WPW come to mind) happen disturbingly often. Anaphylactic shock, like peanut allergy, is another one that comes to mind. Also, there are pediatric cancers, especially leukemias and such, that can still kill at 22, although the 20s generally tends to be a trough for cancer deaths, as people grow out of the range of pediatric tumors and have not yet started to develop even early-onset adult cancers. And of course there are congenital abnormalities that can lead to all kinds of things.
In the UK (and I suspect in many other places as well) the cause of death can be a legal matter, when decided in a Coroner’s Court. Possible verdicts include death by misadventure, accidental death, unlawful killing, lawful killing, suicide, natural causes, and ‘open verdict’. Obviously, this decision has ramifications for other legal matters - such as whether a person shot dead by police is deemed to have been lawfully killed or otherwise.
Death notices for a local woman all said “Died as the result of an accident”. I guess her family could have come up with some half-baked theory about the gun being accidentally discharged while she was cleaning it or something, but I don’t know what explanation they offered themselves for the suicide note.
That was a rather flippant thing to say. I felt deeply sorry for that family who obviously couldn’t come to grips with the suicide of their daughter, but I did wonder why they put that it was an accident when it clearly wasn’t. Wouldn’t it have been better to leave out that information all together?
“Suddenly” is often code for “suicide” in the local death notices too, although sometimes suddenly means simply unexpected, such as a heart attack or similar. “Natural causes” would suggest to me that it wasn’t suicide or an accident that took his life, so probably something like an undiagnosed heart condition, asthma attack, or any one of the thousands of other things that can sometimes go wrong in a young person’s body.
Because people may start asking questions or assuming things if you say nothing. I guess the people involved in this case figured “the people who know it was suicide already know, and nobody else needs to.”