Death, revisited: A new perspective on treatment

"Death is a dialogue between the spirit and the dust," wrote Emily Dickinson. What do you suppose she would have thought about this new perspective on death? According to this Newsweek Health article, doctors are changing the way they look at a body's cellular extinction.

For the longest time, doctors operated under the notion that people who suddenly lost circulation (like from cardiac arrest) died due to lack of blood to the brain and heart. This supposedly caused irreparable damage to the tissues after five minutes. However, no one had actually observed this cellular destruction under a microscope.

It turns out that cells do not die within this time period, but in fact stay alive for hours later. The reason why people can't be resuscitated after four or five minutes is not because their heart tissue is dead, but because the cells actually die when oxygen flow is resumed! This is called "reperfusion" and refers to the resumption of oxygen supply. What does this mean? By pumping a body full of oxygen in attempts to revive them, it actually kills them faster. Read the rest here for more details and information about the new way to treat the dead.