Essay About Death

Death occurs when living stops. From the event of death, we have created religious and cultural traditions. It has become the core of literature and entertainment. As a society we are somewhat fascinated by it. Healthcare practitioners fight everyday to prevent it from happening. Can this event, which is absolute, change its meaning over time?

For centuries, the simple definition of death has been the cessation of life. Early physicians determined death by “a permanent absence of respiration and circulation.” 1 With our growing technological advancements, healthcare providers have been able to push the human body to its limits, maintaining life even in extreme cases. These incredible advancements in medicine have sparked an array of legal and ethical issues. One issue is setting a universal definition of death so that laws and regulations can follow accordingly.

Medical advancements have led the government to create a board called The President’s Council on Bioethics. This council oversees issues concerning the changing definitions of life and death. They have now formed two definitions for death: neurological and cardiorespiratory. 2 In order to qualify as neurologically dead, one must show a permanent loss of consciousness. Cardiorespiratory death, on the other hand, requires one to have an absence of pulse for two to five minutes.

The neurological state of death has been a marker in Western medicine for years. Neurological death or the state of being “brain dead” is the go-ahead for physicians to begin harvesting organs for transplantation. 2 Neurological death can be diagnosed when there is no spontaneous respiration in the body and the brainstem is no longer functioning. Following the death of the brain, the cardiovascular sy...

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Current definitions of life and death have been categorized into two different cases: neurological and cardiorespiratory. Each category has a definite list of qualifications in order for death to be determined. Just the same, each category has contradictions and odd cases in which cardiorespiratory or neurological function are restored. 4 These contradictions leave room for opposition to the new definition of death. Many people and religious groups are not satisfied with the two categories of death. Scholars urge all to consider life as a social construct. We may not be able to determine death positively, but we can consider a patient’s quality of life, level of personhood, interaction with their external environment, and ability to maintain vital signs organically. These considerations may be a step toward the most modern definitions of life and death.