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A Living Human Person on Earth until True Death

Life of a human person on earth is a continuum from true conception until true death. For life to continue on earth, each person must take in oxygen, water and nutrients. Carbon dioxide is exhaled and waste products are passed in urine and stool.

Ventilation and respiration are required for life on earth. Ventilation is movement of air; respiration is exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide occurring in the lungs and via circulation in all tissues of the living person.

Heartbeat is intrinsic to the heart. The heart has its own nerves that causes heart muscle to contract and to stop the contraction. The heart beats without impulses from the brain.

An interdependent functional relationship among cells, tissues, organs and systems maintain the unity of the body, which is a soul-body unity, a life-body unity. The respiratory, circulatory and central nervous systems are vital systems. Without the functioning activities of these three vital systems, life on earth ends quickly.

If breathing and circulation stop, chest compressions must be initiated quickly for life on earth to continue. Sometimes a ventilator, commonly mislabeled a respirator, is used. After true death, neither chest compressions nor a ventilator can be effective. Air can be pushed into the airways and lungs of a dead body until lungs no longer expand. This is called loss of compliance. When compliance is gone, elasticity will also be gone and air cannot get in or out. After true death there cannot be circulation and respiration. Chest compressions and a ventilator can support respiration only in a living person, not a cadaver. After true death, chest compressions or a ventilator can only move air; there cannot be respiration, because respiration is a function of a living human person. Contrariwise, if such efforts at ventilation and respiration are successful, this can be only because soul-body unity is present, i.e., because the person is still living, not dead. Respiration, circulation and heartbeat occurs only in a living person, not a cadaver.

Without respiration and circulation, health of the person deteriorates and death will occur unless breathing and circulation are restored quickly. This deterioration is manifest in cessation of vital activities and disintegration, dissolution, lysis and destruction of cells and tissues of organs and systems. These changes are first at the microscopic level, but eventually in death, they become evident as corruption, decay, decomposition and putrefaction.

Death is the absence of life from the body. After true death (Latin: mors vera) changes in the remains are manifest as disintegration, dissolution, lyses, destruction, corruption, decay, and/or putrefaction. These are pathological changes, which are not biological, rather a lack of biology.

Prior to true death patients are sometimes labeled “as good as dead,” “soon to be dead,” “brain dead,” “cardiac dead,” “probably dead,” “apparently dead,” etc., especially when there is interest to convert such patients into organ donors. A patient with heartbeat, respiration and/or circulation cannot rightly be called a cadaver, a corpse, a dead body. If “probably dead” or “apparently dead” (mors apparens) is applied to a person who is not truly dead, he will certainly be truly dead after the beating heart is cut out. To take action that will cause death based on probability is a violation of justice.

After life is absent from the body, the remains is called a cadaver, a corpse a dead body. The moment of separation of soul from the body is the moment of true death (Latin: mors vera ) and therefore the moment when a human body changes from a living body to a dead body, a corpse, a cadaver (Latin: cadaver). The human cadaver, a corpse, a dead body is thus changed only because it is no longer part of the life-body (soul-body) unity of the living person. After death the body does not respond and must be significantly changed. Such significant change at first is at the microscopic and/or gross levels of pathology manifest by absence of functioning and structural alteration, sufficient that the life-body unity no longer exists. After death these pathologic changes continue. They cannot be stopped; only slowed or delayed by cooling, embalming, mummifying, salting, etc.

How much change must be manifest before a declaration of death is made? For the sake of justice to protect living persons, no one ought to be declared dead unless respiratory and circulatory systems and the entire brain have been destroyed. Such destruction shall be determined in accord with universally accepted standards. This is solidly based medically and unexceptionable ethically and religiously (Gonzaga Law Review 1982/83; 18(3):429-516, p.515 in Potts M, Byrne PA, and Nilges RG, Beyond Brain Death, Philosophy and Medicine 66, Klewer Academic Publishers, 2000; p.72).

Paul A. Byrne, M.D.                           Father Peter Damian Fehlner, F.I., S.T.D.

www.lifeguardianfoundation.org

Fr. Peter Fehlner, F.I. and Dr. Paul Byrne have studied extensively the teachings of the Catholic Church. Basic biology, physiology and pathology indicate a clear difference between life and true death. This brief statement provides guidance to help understand these serious matters.