Death

Death is the end of life. It is the end of an organism or one of its parts. Death may also refer to the end of a process, such as cell death. When referring to the death of a person, one can speak about natural causes, homicide, suicide, accident, and so on. The concept of death is a key subject in medical ethics and philosophy.

In biology and medicine, “death” is considered to be synonymous with “the state or condition of being dead”. More specifically, it is the permanent cessation of all vital functions – heartbeat (cardiac arrest), brain activity (including irreversible coma), and respiration (respiratory arrest). In contrast to human beings, in most animals cellular senescence leads to eventual organ system failure and death long before all individual cells have ceased functioning; for example some birds can live over 100 years but their individual cells only divide 20-30 times before they die. Cellular senescence also occurs in human beings but at much lower rates; for example neurons generally do not divide after early development but they continue working throughout life.

The study of death is called thanatology. Thanatology covers a wide range of topics including forensics, mourning rituals around the world, popular attitudes toward dying and grieving (see antemortem and postmortem), near-death experiences (NDEs), reincarnation beliefs, aspects related to cadavers (such as body donation), cremation vs burial customs – just to name a few.

One common definition used by many different people when talking about death is “a permanent cessation of all vital functions” This means that once someone has died they are no longer alive and their heart will never beat again or they will never take another breath. To many people this seems like a pretty straightforward way to define what death is however there are actually quite a lot problems with using this definition.. For example if we take someone who has been in a coma for many years and then suddenly their vital functions stop – are they really dead? Afterall according to our previous definition they would be considered dead however most people would say that this person was not really dead because prior to their sudden “vital function stoppage” they were still technically alive even though they were in a coma.. So as you can see defining exactly what death is can actually be quite difficult!
Another problem with trying to define what death is ,is that it changes depending on cultural context.. For example in some cultures it may be considered that someone has only died once their soul has left their body whereas in other cultures someone may not be considered dead until after funeral rites have been carried out etc… So as you can see it can actually be quite difficultto try come up with 1 single universally accepted definition for what exactly “death” actually is!