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Asked by u12tsangv to Dilwar, Lou, Rachel, Simon, Susan on 18 Nov 2013.
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Simon Langley-Evans answered on 18 Nov 2013:
Great question!
The way in which we define death is really important and people have worried about it for ages. In the past many people got buried alive because doing something simple like checking for breathing was not good enough. The Victorians invented coffins that would allow people who were buried alive to signal to the surface and be rescued. Other people asked that their heart should be pierced before burial.
Later diagnosis involved detecting the stopping of the heartbeat as well as breathing. That is no longer enough because we can now use CPR and defibrillation to restart the heart. These days doctors would also look for signs of brain death which is picked up when there is no evidence of electrical activity in the brain, which can be measured using an electroencephalogram.
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Susan Skelton answered on 19 Nov 2013:
This is a really interesting question!
There is actually no legal definition of death in the UK. When doctors decide whether someone is dead, they decide by using their judgement and several criteria. These include checking that the heart has stopped, checking that the patient has stopped breathing, and by checking various reflexes.
The question of how we can determine whether or not someone is dead is particularly important now that we have so many technological machines that can keep someone alive who is in a coma and unable to visibly respond to us or communicate. Sometimes we keep someone alive by using a ventilator to keep their lungs and heart functioning, when otherwise that person would have died. A big area of research is involved with trying to find out whether these patients are alive and can hear their surroundings and think (even if they can’t communicate) or not. Sometimes this is done using an MRI scanner to measure the activity of their brains, but it is still not very well understood.
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