Death is the termination of the biological Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy functions that sustain a living Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes (biology) from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased (death), or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate organism In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homoeostasis as a stable whole. An organism may either be unicellular (single-celled) or be composed of, as in humans, many trillions of cells grouped into. The word refers both to the particular processes of life's cessation as well as to the condition or state of a formerly-living body With regard to living things, a body is the physical body of an individual. "Body" often is used in connection with appearance, health issues and death. The study of the workings of the body is physiology.

Phenomena which commonly bring about death include predation In ecology, predation describes a biological interaction where a predator feeds on its prey (the organism that is attacked). Predators may or may not kill their prey prior to feeding on them, but the act of predation always results in the death of its prey and the eventual absorption of the prey's tissue through consumption. The other main, malnutrition Malnutrition is the insufficient, excessive or imbalanced consumption of nutrients. A number of different nutrition disorders may arise, depending on which nutrients are under or overabundant in the diet, accidents An accident is a specific, unexpected, unusual and unintended external action which occurs in a particular time and place, with no apparent and deliberate cause but with marked effects. It implies a generally negative outcome which may have been avoided or prevented had circumstances leading up to the accident been recognized, and acted upon, resulting in terminal injury Physical trauma refers to a physical injury, generally of a considerable degree. A trauma patient is someone who has suffered serious and life-threatening physical injury, with the potential for secondary complications such as shock, respiratory failure and death, and disease A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal disfunctions, such as autoimmune diseases. Ecologically, disease is defined as. Death of an entire species is known as extinction In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or group of taxa. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of that species . Because a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena. Human activity has increased the number of extinctions in recent times The Holocene extinction is the widespread, ongoing extinction of species during the present Holocene epoch. The large number of extinctions span numerous families of plants and animals including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and arthropods; a sizeable fraction of these extinctions are occurring in the rainforests. Between 1500 and 2009, 875, one cause, for example, being the destruction of ecosystems An ecosystem consists of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving, physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water, and sunlight. It is all the organisms in a given area, along with the nonliving factors with which they interact; a biological community and its as a consequence of the spread of industrial Industrialisation is the process of social and economic change that transforms a human group from a pre-industrial society into an industrial one. It is a part of a wider modernisation process, where social change and economic development are closely related with technological innovation, particularly with the development of large-scale energy and technology Technology is the usage and knowledge of tools, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization. The word technology comes from the Greek technología — téchnē (τέχνη), an 'art', 'skill' or 'craft' and -logía (-λογία), the study of something, or the branch of knowledge of a discipline. The term can either be applied generally.^[1]

The nature of death has been for millennia a central concern of the world's religious traditions The world's principal religions and spiritual traditions may be classified into a small number of major groups, although this is by no means a uniform practice. This theory began in the 18th century with the goal of recognizing the relative levels of civility in non-European societies. However, it quickly transformed into a subset of the and of philosophical enquiry Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. It is distinguished from other ways of addressing fundamental questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument. The word "philosophy" comes from the, and belief in some kind of afterlife The afterlife is the idea that consciousness or the mind continues after the death of the body occurs, by natural or supernatural means. In many popular views, this continued existence often takes place in an immaterial or spiritual realm. Major views on the afterlife derive from religion, esotericism and metaphysics or rebirth Reincarnation is believed to occur when the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, comes back to Earth in a newborn body. This phenomenon is also known as transmigration of the soul has been a central aspect of religious belief. In modern scientific Science is, in its broadest sense, any systematic knowledge that is capable of resulting in a correct prediction or reliable outcome. In this sense, science may refer to a highly skilled technique, technology, or practice enquiry, the origin and nature of consciousness has yet to be fully understood; any such view about the existence In common usage, existence is the world we are aware of through our senses, and that persists independently without them. In academic philosophy the word has a more specialized meaning, being contrasted with essence, which specifies different forms of existence as well as different identity conditions for objects and properties. Philosophers or non-existence of consciousness after death therefore remains speculative.^[2]

Senescence

Almost all animals Animals are a major group of mostly multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently. All animals are also fortunate enough to survive hazards to their existence eventually die from senescence Senescence or biological aging is the change in the biology of an organism as it ages after its maturity. Such changes range from those affecting its cells and their function to that of the whole organism. There are a number of theories as to why senescence occurs, including ones that claim it is programmed by gene expression changes and that it. Rare and remarkable exceptions include the hydra Hydra is a genus of simple fresh-water animal possessing radial symmetry. Hydras are predatory animals belonging to the phylum Cnidaria and the class Hydrozoa. They can be found in most unpolluted fresh-water ponds, lakes and streams in the temperate and tropical regions by gently sweeping a collecting net through weedy areas. They are usually a and the jellyfish Turritopsis nutricula Turritopsis nutricula or immortal jellyfish is a hydrozoan whose medusa, or jellyfish, form can revert to the polyp stage after becoming sexually mature. It is the only known case of a metazoan capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity as a solitary stage. It does this through the, both thought to be, in effect, immortal Biological immortality is the absence of a sustained increase in rate of mortality as a function of chronological age. A cell or organism that does not age, or which at some point in its life will cease to age, is one which is deemed to be biologically immortal. However, this definition of immortality has been challenged in the new "Handbook.^[3] Causes of death in humans as a result of intentional Volition or will is the cognitive process by which an individual decides on and commits to a particular course of action. It is defined as purposive striving, and is one of the primary human psychological functions . Volitional processes can be applied consciously, and they can be automatized as habits over time. Most modern conceptions of activity include suicide Suicide is the act of a human being intentionally causing his or her own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair, or attributed to some underlying mental disorder which includes depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism and drug abuse. Financial difficulties, interpersonal relationships and other undesirable situations play, homicide Homicide refers to the act of a human killing a human being. A common form of homicide, for example, would be murder. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English. Homicide is not always a punishable act under the criminal law, and is different than a murder from such formal legal point of and war War is a behaviour pattern exhibited by many primate species including humans, and also found in many ant species. The primary feature of this behaviour pattern is a certain state of organized violent conflict that is engaged in between two or more separate social entities. Such a conflict is always an attempt at altering either the psychological. From all causes, roughly 150,000 people die around the world each day.^[4]

Physiological Physiology is the science of the functioning of living systems. It is a subcategory of biology. In physiology, the scientific method is applied to determine how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells and biomolecules carry out the chemical or physical function that they have in a living system. The word physiology is from Ancient Greek: φύσις death is now seen as less an event than a process: conditions once considered indicative of death are now reversible.^[5] Where in the process a dividing line is drawn between life and death depends on factors beyond the presence or absence of vital signs Vital signs are measures of various physiological statistics, often taken by health professionals, in order to assess the most basic body functions. Vital signs are an essential part of a case presentation. The act of taking vital signs normally entails recording Body temperature, Pulse rate , Blood pressure, and Respiratory rate, but may also. In general, clinical death Clinical death is the medical term for cessation of blood circulation and breathing, the two necessary criteria to sustain life. It occurs when the heart stops beating in a regular rhythm, a condition called cardiac arrest. The term is also sometimes used in resuscitation research is neither necessary nor sufficient for a determination of legal death Legal death is a legal pronouncement by a qualified person that further medical care is not appropriate and that a patient should be considered dead under the law. The specific criteria used to pronounce legal death are variable and often depend on certain circumstances in order to pronounce a person legally dead. Controversy is often encountered. A patient with working heart The heart is a myogenic muscular organ found in all animals with a circulatory system , that is responsible for pumping blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions. The term cardiac (as in cardiology) means "related to the heart" and comes from the Greek καρδιά, kardia, for "heart" and lungs The lung is the essential respiration organ in all air-breathing animals, including most tetrapods, a few fish and a few snails. In mammals and the more complex life forms, the two lungs are located in the chest on either side of the heart. Their principal function is to transport oxygen from the atmosphere into the bloodstream, and to release determined to be brain dead Brain death is a legal indicator of death in the USA that refers to the irreversible end of all brain activity due to total necrosis of the cerebral neurons following loss of blood flow and oxygenation. Brain-stem death (not whole brain death) is taken to be the significant indicator of death. The significant point is that the brain is no longer can be pronounced legally dead without clinical death occurring. Precise medical definition of death, in other words, becomes more problematic, paradoxically, as scientific knowledge Science is, in its broadest sense, any systematic knowledge that is capable of resulting in a correct prediction or reliable outcome. In this sense, science may refer to a highly skilled technique, technology, or practice and medicine Medicine is the science and art of healing humans. It includes a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness. Before scientific medicine, healing arts were practiced along with alchemical and ritual practices that developed out of religious and cultural traditions. The term & advance.

Signs and symptoms

Signs of death or strong indications that a person is no longer alive are:

• Ceasing breathing
• The body no longer metabolizes
• No pulse Heart rate is the number of heartbeats per unit of time - typically expressed as beats per minute - which can vary as the body's need to absorb oxygen and excrete carbon dioxide changes, such as during exercise or sleep. The measurement of heart rate is used by medical professionals to assist in the diagnosis and tracking of medical conditions. It
• Pallor mortis Pallor mortis is a postmortem paleness which happens in those with light skin almost instantly (in the 15–120 minutes after the death) because of a lack of capillary circulation throughout the body. The blood sinks down into the lower parts (according to gravity) of the body creating the livor mortis, paleness which happens in the 15–120 minutes after death
• Livor mortis Livor mortis or postmortem lividity or hypostasis , one of the signs of death, is a settling of the blood in the lower (dependent) portion of the body, causing a purplish red discoloration of the skin: when the heart is no longer agitating the blood, heavy red blood cells sink through the serum by action of gravity. This discoloration does not, a settling of the blood in the lower (dependent) portion of the body
• Algor mortis Algor mortis is the reduction in body temperature following death. This is generally a steady decline until matching ambient temperature, although external factors can have a significant influence, the reduction in body temperature following death. This is generally a steady decline until matching ambient temperature
• Rigor mortis Rigor mortis is one of the recognizable signs of death that is caused by a chemical change in the muscles after death, causing the limbs of the corpse to become stiff (Latin rigor) and difficult to move or manipulate. In humans it commences after about 3 hours, reaches maximum stiffness after 12 hours, and gradually dissipates until approximately 7, the limbs of the corpse become stiff (Latin rigor) and difficult to move or manipulate
• Decomposition Decomposition or rotting is the process by which tissues of a dead organism break down into simpler forms of matter. The process is essential for new growth and development of living organisms because it recycles the finite matter that occupies physical space in the biome. Bodies of living organisms begin to decompose shortly after death. It is a, the reduction into simpler forms of matter, accompanied by a strong, unpleasant odor.

Diagnosis

Problems of definition

The concept of death is a key to human understanding of the phenomenon.^[6] There are many scientific approaches to the concept. For example, brain death, as practiced in medical science, defines death as a point in time during which brain activity ceases.^{[7][8][9][10]} One of the challenges in defining death is in distinguishing it from life. As a point in time, death would seem to refer to the moment at which life ends. However, determining when death has occurred requires drawing precise conceptual boundaries between life and death. This is problematic because there is little consensus over how to define life. It is possible to define life in terms of consciousness. When consciousness ceases, a living organism can be said to have died. One of the notable flaws in this approach, however, is that there are many organisms which are alive but probably not conscious (for example, single-celled organisms). Another problem with this approach is in defining consciousness, which has many different definitions given by modern scientists, psychologists and philosophers. This general problem of defining death applies to the particular challenge of defining death in the context of medicine.

Other definitions for death focus on the character of cessation of something.^[11] In this context "death" describes merely the state where something has ceased, e.g., life. Thus, the definition of "life" simultaneously defines death.

Historically, attempts to define the exact moment of a human's death have been problematic. Death was once defined as the cessation of heartbeat (cardiac arrest) and of breathing, but the development of CPR and prompt defibrillation have rendered that definition inadequate because breathing and heartbeat can sometimes be restarted. Events which were causally linked to death in the past no longer kill in all circumstances; without a functioning heart or lungs, life can sometimes be sustained with a combination of life support devices, organ transplants and artificial pacemakers.

Today, where a definition of the moment of death is required, doctors and coroners usually turn to "brain death" or "biological death" to define a person as being clinically dead; people are considered dead when the electrical activity in their brain ceases. It is presumed that an end of electrical activity indicates the end of consciousness. However, suspension of consciousness must be permanent, and not transient, as occurs during certain sleep stages, and especially a coma. In the case of sleep, EEGs can easily tell the difference.

However, the category of "brain death" is seen by some scholars to be problematic. For instance, Dr Franklin Miller, senior faculty member at the Department of Bioethics, National Institutes of Health, notes "By the late 1990s, however, the equation of brain death with death of the human being was increasingly challenged by scholars, based on evidence regarding the array of biological functioning displayed by patients correctly diagnosed as having this condition who were maintained on mechanical ventilation for substantial periods of time. These patients maintained the ability to sustain circulation and respiration, control temperature, excrete wastes, heal wounds, fight infections and, most dramatically, to gestate fetuses (in the case of pregnant "brain-dead" women)." ^[12]

Those people maintaining that only the neo-cortex of the brain is necessary for consciousness sometimes argue that only electrical activity should be considered when defining death. Eventually it is possible that the criterion for death will be the permanent and irreversible loss of cognitive function, as evidenced by the death of the cerebral cortex. All hope of recovering human thought and personality is then gone given current and foreseeable medical technology. However, at present, in most places the more conservative definition of death – irreversible cessation of electrical activity in the whole brain, as opposed to just in the neo-cortex – has been adopted (for example the Uniform Determination Of Death Act in the United States). In 2005, the Terri Schiavo case brought the question of brain death and artificial sustenance to the front of American politics.

Even by whole-brain criteria, the determination of brain death can be complicated. EEGs can detect spurious electrical impulses, while certain drugs, hypoglycemia, hypoxia, or hypothermia can suppress or even stop brain activity on a temporary basis. Because of this, hospitals have protocols for determining brain death involving EEGs at widely separated intervals under defined conditions.

Legal

In the United States, a person is dead by law if a Statement of Death or Death Certificate is approved by a licensed medical practitioner. Various legal consequences follow death, including the removal from the person of what in legal terminology is called personhood.

The possession of brain activities, or ability to resume brain activity, is a necessary condition to legal personhood in the United States. "It appears that once brain death has been determined ... no criminal or civil liability will result from disconnecting the life-support devices." (Dority v. Superior Court of San Bernardino County, 193 Cal.Rptr. 288, 291 (1983))

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