快猫短视频

See more: An illustrated version of this article will be published within the next two weeks on our CultureLab books and arts blog

A DECADE ago science writer Dick Teresi was working on a story about pinpointing the moment of death. 鈥淚 thought I had chosen a simple topic. Who is alive? Who is dead? I thought science held the answers,鈥� he writes. Instead he found that modern medicine had transformed death into a philosophical question. In The Undead he shows that today death is not simply defined by when your heart stops or you stop breathing, but when whatever makes you you is gone.

Teresi tours through the ways humanity has identified death throughout history, and includes several alarming anecdotes about when death has been misdiagnosed. But his primary focus is on brain death, and he grows increasingly aggravated as he points out that the criteria used to determine 鈥渋rreversible coma鈥� were established by a group of 13 Harvard physicians and academics nearly half a century ago, based on no data and with a stated goal of reducing controversy when it came to procuring donor organs. What鈥檚 more, he stresses, even those criteria are no longer fully adhered to. For example, electroencephalography (EEG) to look for activity in the cortex is not mandated.

Also alarming, he says, is that the list of conditions that can mimic the traits of brain death has grown over the years, and now includes hypothermia and drug intoxication.

鈥淭he list of conditions that can mimic brain death 鈥� including intoxication 鈥� has grown over the years鈥�

Modern medicine has made it possible to restart stopped hearts, reverse the course of a stroke hours after it has started, and to enable people whose minds are trapped within non-functioning bodies to communicate through thought patterns or eye movements. Yet Teresi concludes that as we continue to chase death into the shadows, distinguishing its boundaries may become more of an art than a science.