# Defining death - not a moment, a process **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 18, 2011, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defining-death-not-a-moment-a-process/568038 "2011-01-18T03:08:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2011, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defining-death-not-a-moment-a-process/568038/1 "2011-01-18T03:08:23Z")
I’m watching a documentary called “back from the dead” - first story is about a woman in Norway who fell through ice into icy water. Long story short: her heart was stopped for THREE HOURS. Today, she is a doctor of radiology, no deficits of any kind. I’m still watching but still… how do we even define death when this kind of thing can happen??? I’ll let you know if some other fact emerges to clarify this question further. ---
**Author:** ![pudytat72](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@pudytat72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pudytat72)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2011, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defining-death-not-a-moment-a-process/568038/2 "2011-01-18T05:08:04Z")
In these cases (exposure to cold), the adage is “You aren’t dead until you are warm and dead”. Someone who looks dead when they are cold, can be revived when they are warmed up. ---
**Author:** ![6ImpossibleThingsB4Breakfast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/6/e19adc/32.png) [@6ImpossibleThingsB4Breakfast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/6ImpossibleThingsB4Breakfast)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2011, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defining-death-not-a-moment-a-process/568038/3 "2011-01-18T06:38:40Z")
Death is just a concept. Or a smell. ---
**Author:** ![Rala](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@Rala](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rala)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2011, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defining-death-not-a-moment-a-process/568038/4 "2011-01-18T06:52:26Z")
I think death is defined as the cessation of all brain activity. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2011, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defining-death-not-a-moment-a-process/568038/5 "2011-01-18T08:10:08Z")
> [@Rala](#): > > I think death is defined as the cessation of all brain activity. Nope. They can and have stopped all electrical activity in the brain to do certain surgeries. Showed it in this documentary. Every monitor indicated: dead. Very dead. But not so much… Strange. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2011, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defining-death-not-a-moment-a-process/568038/6 "2011-01-18T08:15:00Z")
Many things in life are like this (for example: growing a beard or becoming a human being in the first place). All we can do is to set a marker somewhere in the process that we mostly agree happens to work most of the time - and that’s why resuscitation or not of a dying person involves a judgment call as to when it’s time to give up. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2011, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defining-death-not-a-moment-a-process/568038/7 "2011-01-18T11:05:08Z")
You can define death multiple ways, which complicates things. There are at least three kinds of “death” involved in dying that I can think of, arranged somewhat hierarchically. There’s cell death; if every cell in your body is nonfunctional, you are completely dead. There’s the death of the body; the body is a living system comprised of smaller living systems (cells), and the body can cease function - die, in other words - while there are quite a few cells and tissues still active on a low level. And there’s the death of the mind; you can be brain dead with your body and cells still mostly whirring along without you. Also to complicate matters further there are two different phenomenon here that we both call by the same term; “alive”. There is a phenomenon called “life”; our bodies are of course examples of life. And then there are our minds, which are complex information processes running in the hardware of the brain and a very different phenomenon than “life”. We are using the term “alive” to refer both to a type of complex chemical reaction, and to a particular type of information processing; they are very different things even though we use the same word for both. > [@Stoid](#): > > Nope. They can and have stopped all electrical activity in the brain to do certain surgeries. Showed it in this documentary. Every monitor indicated: dead. Very dead. > > But not so much… > Strange. Yes, I’ve heard of that. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defining-death-not-a-moment-a-process/568038/8 "2011-01-19T03:09:11Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > Nope. They can and have stopped all electrical activity in the brain to do certain surgeries. . Huh? How and why did they do that? I’d like to know more. Af for people being revived after an extended stay in icy water, I believe it’s a relatively well known phenomenon (especially with children), although I’d like to know what allows the brain to survive in this situation. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defining-death-not-a-moment-a-process/568038/9 "2011-01-20T00:50:21Z")
Years ago, Sweden defined death as the cessitation of heart action-in other words, no heartbeat = dead. then a guy (who happened to be a gangster) “died” (be was given a battery-powered artificial heart. According to Swedish law, he was dead, and could not be prosecuted. I don’t know how this played out-did Sweden change its law defining death? As for me, I am NOT planning to die-I plan to enter “coldsleep” (long term storage at -272 degree F. In this state (which I hope is reversible), I plan to spend about 350 years-after which I plan to be revived. Will I be “dead” in the interim? ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/le_ministre_de_l_au-dela/32/12181_2.png) [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defining-death-not-a-moment-a-process/568038/10 "2011-01-20T00:58:30Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > You can define death multiple ways, which complicates things. There are at least three kinds of “death” involved in dying that I can think of, arranged somewhat hierarchically. “Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do - Go through his clothes and look for loose change.” ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defining-death-not-a-moment-a-process/568038/11 "2011-01-20T17:33:56Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Huh? How and why did they do that? I’d like to know more. I believe it’s a reference to a type of surgery where they drug and chill the body until it is just above freezing then they remove and store the blood; it essentially nearly “stops”. It’s used for operating on brain aneurysms (tangles of fragile blood vessels that tend to burst) since anything less causes the aneurysm to burst, damaging the brain. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2011, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defining-death-not-a-moment-a-process/568038/12 "2011-01-21T00:48:27Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > Nope. They can and have stopped all electrical activity in the brain to do certain surgeries. Showed it in this documentary. Every monitor indicated: dead. Very dead. Or the monitor is incapable of detecting all brain activity. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2011, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defining-death-not-a-moment-a-process/568038/13 "2011-01-21T03:31:03Z")
Any of us who want our rights to be different than the rights of a corpse implicitly want there to be an official line drawn somewhere. My vote is to let small groups of doctors decide, which also makes it easier to harvest organs for transplantations while they are freshest and most viable. ---
**Author:** ![Waenara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/50afbb/32.png) [@Waenara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waenara)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defining-death-not-a-moment-a-process/568038/14 "2011-01-23T03:26:52Z")
My basic definition of death is that if they could revive you, you weren’t dead. If someone says “I died on the operating table and they brought me back”, I would say they weren’t dead - they just almost died. At various times in history, they thought that if you weren’t breathing, or if your heart wasn’t beating, you were dead. They were wrong - the person was on their way to dying but resuscitation still could have been done if they had sufficient resuscitation methods. The same with people in cold water or where they are chilled to withstand a medical procedure - they aren’t dead yet (cue Monty Python reference). If proper resuscitation isn’t done they will die, but they’re not yet dead. Basically, I think the only “dead” that I would use as a definition is total brain death. Even if you resuscitate the body, brain death means it’s no longer a person - just a dead brain in a body that’s being sustained by life support. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defining-death-not-a-moment-a-process/568038/15 "2011-01-23T04:48:34Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > I’m watching a documentary called “back from the dead” - first story is about a woman in Norway who fell through ice into icy water. > > Long story short: her heart was stopped for THREE HOURS. Very unlikely. If this story is true, it’s most likely based on the physiology of drowning that her heart was greatly slowed, not stopped. The outer limit for survival in these circumstances (due to the mammalian “diving reflex”, aided by being in very cold water) is generally put at about one hour and it’s most common to have instances of recovery without neurologic deficit in children, not adults. > [@](#): > > … how do we even define death when this kind of thing can happen??? It’s not a matter of how we “define death”. _If_ this story is genuine, it would represent an extreme example of human variation, not something requiring us to “redefine death”. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defining-death-not-a-moment-a-process/568038/16 "2011-01-23T05:23:01Z")
I hadn’t noticed this thread at first, and I don’t know if **Stoid** saw the other, but we just had a [relevant exchange](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13383773#post13383773) in another thread as a result of my mention of “brain death.” > [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Or the monitor is incapable of detecting all brain activity. In short, yes. “Total brain death” seems a little harder to pin down than most of us probably thought ([cite](http://www.neurotransmitter.net/braindeath.html), again).