Changing Our Definition of Death

 Medical Science  

Dr. Sam Parnia says people can be revived several hours after they have seemingly died. Should this change the way we think about death?

People can be revived several hours after they have seemingly died, according to Dr Sam Parnia, the director of resuscitation research at Stony Brook University in New York. The BBC News reports that this potential might make us reconsider how we think about death?

Doctors have long believed that if someone is without a heartbeat for longer than about 20 minutes, the brain usually suffers irreparable damage. But this can be avoided, Parnia says, with good quality CPR and careful post-resuscitation care.

He says it is vital that chest compressions occur at the right rate and force and that patients are not over-ventilated. CPR would be considerably prolonged, with machines doing the work.

As Parnia explains in his new book Erasing Death: The Science That Is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death, after the brain stops receiving a regular supply of oxygen through the circulation of blood it does not instantly perish but goes into a sort of hibernation, a way of fending off its own process of decay.

The process of “waking up” this hibernated brain may well be the riskiest time of all, since oxygen can potentially be toxic at this stage.

Dr. Sam Parnia

The effect, Parnia says, is like that of a tsunami following an earthquake, and the best response is to cool patients down, from 37C to 32C.

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“Cooling therapy, the reason it works so well, is that it actually slows down brain cell decay,” says Parnia.

The increasingly blurred line between life and death is prompting metaphysical questions as well as medical ones.

Contrary to popular perception, death is not a specific moment, but a well-defined process. From a biological viewpoint, cardiac arrest is synonymous with clinical death. During a cardiac arrest, all three criteria of clinical death are present: the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working, and the brain ceases functioning.

Subsequently, there is a period of time-which may last from a few seconds up to an hour or longer-in which emergency medical efforts may succeed in resuscitating the heart and reversing the dying process. The experiences that individuals undergo during this period of cardiac arrest provide a unique window of understanding into what we are all likely to experience during the dying process.

Innovative techniques have proven to be effective in revitalizing both the body and mind, but they are only employed in approximately half of the hospitals throughout the United States and Europe.

Parnia, Director of the AWARE Study (AWAreness during REsuscitation) and one of the world’s leading experts on the scientific study of death and near-death experiences (NDE), presents cutting-edge research from the front lines of critical care and resuscitation medicine while also shedding light on the ultimate mystery: What happens to human consciousness during and after death? Dr. Parnia reveals how some form of “afterlife” may be uniquely ours, as evidenced by the continuation of the human mind and psyche after the brain stops functioning.

With physicians such as Dr. Parnia at the forefront, we are on the verge of discovering a new universal science of consciousness that reveals the nature of mind and a future where death is not the final defeat, but is, in fact, reversible.



SOURCE  BBC

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