When are we really dead?

Question

I mean, ages ago they said it was when you stop breathing, then they said it is when the heart stopped, then it is when the brain stops registering and others have other ideas... What are your thoughts on this?

Answer 1

8 When you stop caring. The physical aspects is of more interest to flies and worms.

Answer 2

When a contribution, nor the promise of one, can no longer be made.

Answer 3

You are really dead when your life has no purpose.  The physical activity of going through the motions of life are meaningless in and of themselves.

Similarly, just because the physical body has stopped moving, its heart, its respiration, and brain function have ended, does not mean that the person is dead; only the physical body has died.  

Answer 4

Well, what does it mean to be alive? Do you believe a person on full life support (vegetable state) is alive? If you consider them to be alive, your answer would be when the heart stops. On the flip side, the Aztecs used to rip the hearts out of their captives. The people who just had their hearts removed were still alive for a few seconds afterward.

From a medical standpoint though, you are dead when your heart stops. Remember those machines that go beep beep...flatline.

Answer 5

Never.  Only the people around you, think you are dead.  To them in any case.  You just moved on from one life form to another, without interuption.  If you want you can even tell the doctors to go and do something worthwhile, just after you passed on.

Peace.

Answer 6

It is actually officially when there is no more brain activity. Which happend farily quickly unless the person is on oxygen or a ventilator.

When I was a nurse I had the responsibabilty to proncing people dead. This was not easy for a twenty year old new nurse.

I had no way to check brain activity. I had to rely on the absence of blood pressure, pulse, breathing, and dilated and fixed pupils.

When a younger patient is a code patient, the staff does the best to keep the body oxynated and work on getting the heart beating on it's own.

Answer 7

When the body ceases to function. In the teaching of the Buddha, all of us will pass away eventually as a part in the natural process of birth, old-age and death and that we should always keep in mind the impermanence of life. The life that we all cherish and wish to hold on.

In Buddhism, however, death is not the end of life, it is merely the end of the body we inhabit in this life, but our spirit will still remain and seek out through the need of attachment, attachment to a new body and new life. Where they will be born is a result of the past and the accumulation of positive and negative action, and the resultant karma (cause and effect) is a result of ones past actions.

Answer 8

good question. i think it's when the brain stops working because if your heart stops, it can still start up again

Answer 9

If the brain stops, your body stops, you die.

If the heart stops, you won't get oxygen in your brain and the brain stops.

If you stop breathing, you won't get oxygen in your blood to keep doing the echanges and your brain stops, and you die.

But yet, your organs may not fuction and you might still be alive with the tcnology.

I think it's the brain, after all the brain controls you.

Answer 10

Think yourself as a 'battery'------now feel, when you're really dead! There are so many living persons in the world right now at different hospitals, declared as 'clinically dead' by the doctors! They're also DEAD in a way. Besides that, I've seen dozens of living guys---walking, talking, eating, loving------yet they're dead to me! That's why I mentioned Battery------when 'charges' are finished, it's dead! (May Scientists bless them!)  

Answer 11

According to doctors, the real death comes  when the brain permanently ceases to respond. When the brain dies.