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“They say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.�
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eath is the termination of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include biological aging, predation, malnutrition, disease, suicide, homicide, starvation, dehydration, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury. Bodies of living organisms begin to decompose shortly after death. Death has commonly been considered a sad or unpleasant occasion, due to the termination of social and familial relations with the deceased or affection for the being that has died. The word death comes from Old English deaĂ°, which in turn comes from Proto-Germanic dauthuz. This comes from the Proto-Indo-European stem dheu meaning the “Process, act of dyingâ€?.
In society, the nature of death and humanity’s awareness of its own mortality has for millennia been a concern of the world’s religious traditions and of philosophical inquiry. This includes belief in resurrection or an afterlife - Abrahamic religions, reincarnation or rebirth - Dharmic religions, or that consciousness permanently ceases to exist, known as eternal oblivion - atheism.
In most jurisdictions where capital punishment is carried out today, the death penalty is reserved for premeditated murder, espionage, treason, or as part of military justice. In some countries, sexual crimes, such as adultery and sodomy, carry the death penalty, as do religious crimes such as apostasy, the formal renunciation of one’s religion. In many retentionist countries, drug trafficking is also a capital offense. Death in warfare and in suicide attack also have cultural links, and the ideas of dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, mutiny punishable by death, grieving relatives of dead soldiers and death notification are embedded in many cultures. Recently in the western world, with the increase in terrorism following the September 11 attacks, but also further back in time with suici de bombings, kamikaze missions in World War II and suicide missions in a host of other conflicts in history, death for a cause by way of suicide attack, and martyrdom have had significant cultural impacts.
About 50 billion cells die in your body every day.
In any given second, more than twice as many people are born as die.
Death is the center of many traditions and organizations; customs relating to death are a feature of every culture around the world. Much of this revolves around the care of the dead, as well as the afterlife and the disposal of bodies upon the onset of death. The disposal of human corpses does, in general, begin with the last offices before significant time has passed, and ritualistic ceremonies often occur, most commonly interment or cremation. This is not a unified practice; in Tibet, for instance, the body is given a sky burial and left on a mountain top. Proper preparation for death and techniques and ceremonies for producing the ability to transfer one’s spiritual attainments into another body are subjects of detailed study in Tibet. Mummification or embalming is also prevalent in some cultures, to retard the rate of decay. Legal aspects of death are also part of many cultures, particularly the settlement of the deceased estate and the issues of inheritance and in some countries, inheritance taxation. Capital punishment is also a culturally divisive aspect of death.
Talking about death and witnessing it is a difficult issue with most cultures. Western societies may like to treat the dead with the utmost material respect, with an official embalmer and associated rites.
In Japan, for example, ending a life with honor by seppuku was considered a desirable death, whereas according to traditional Christian and Islamic cultures, suicide is viewed as a sin.
In Brazil, a human death is counted officially when it is registered by existing family members at a cartรณrio, a government-authorized registry. Though a Public Registry Law guarantees all Brazilian citizens the right to register deaths, regardless of their financial means, of their family members, the Brazilian government has not taken away the burden, the hidden costs and fees, of filing for a death. For many impoverished families, the indirect costs and burden of filing for a death lead to a more appealing, unofficial, local, cultural burial, which in turn raises the debate about inaccurate mortality rates.
Suicide in general, and particularly euthanasia, are also points of cultural debate. Both acts are understood very differently in different cultures. Eastern societies may be more open to accepting it as a fait accompli, with a funeral procession of the dead body ending in an open air burning-to-ashes of the same.
In China, human trafficking and serious cases of corruption are also punished by the death penalty. In militaries around the world courtsmartial have imposed death sentences for offenses such as cowardice, desertion, insubordination, and mutiny.
Of the 55 million deaths per year, about 9.5 million are Chinese.
Death is personified in many cultures, with such symbolic representations as the Grim Reaper, Azrael, the Hindu God Yama and Father Time.
There is some truth to the old saying,
“There are only two things you can count on in life: death and taxes.�
Everyone experiences death.
DEATH IN RELIGION Some people know ahead of time when their death will occur. Terminal illnesses, when diagnosed ahead of time, allow a person to set his or her affairs in order, make relationships right, and say goodbye to loved ones. In these cases, every person involved has a chance to gradually adjust and make peace with death, as much as possible. However, not everyone has this chance. Many deaths occur suddenly. Death can, and often does, strike without warning.
No one is promised tomorrow. The only thing we can count on is today.
Many people around the world turn to religion to answer questions about death and the afterlife, especially when someone is facing his or her own mortality. Strangely, even a brief glance at many of the world’s religions reveals that many theologies glamorize death, promising rewards in the afterlife, including increased understanding of God and the universe and even, in some cases, supernatural powers that were unavailable during the mortal life.
But the reality of death is that it should be avoided at all costs. Death is the worst thing to ever happen in all of existence. Life is a precious gift we are unable to recreate once it’s gone. The truth about death lays plain the harshness of the grave … but also the true beauty of the life we already have.
Any study of the nature of death begs an important foundational question:
Why must things die in the first place?
Indeed, death is a grand mystery. Throughout time, every major religion, philosophy, and spiritual train of thought has sought to explain this mystery. It is a subject that touches the life of every man and woman, uniting the entire human race under a cloud of inevitable mortality. The rich and the poor alike meet the same end; the black and the white both go to the grave; the powerful and the humble all leave this planet eventually. Interestingly, scientific research into single-celled organisms reveals that the nature of life, on a cellular level, does not automatically include a self-destruct mechanism for death. In other words, it appears that death is an unnatural part of life. Yet despite this, everything on earth eventually dies.
Many lines of religious thought simply accept the inevitability of death and instead try to offer better alternatives that await the faithful in the afterlife. These ideas bring comfort to many people who have lost loved ones or are facing death themselves, but they leave others wondering:
“Why must death exist? Wouldn’t an powerful God eradicate death? Shouldn’t all life inherently live forever?” So the question of the nature of death also brings profound implications about the nature of God. Maybe, some reason, God is not as powerful as He says, since the problem of death remains. Maybe God numbs our sensibilities after death, if we are promised happiness in paradise despite the horrors unfolding on our loved ones who are still alive. Maybe, if living a bad life truly results in eternal torment afterward, God is not really as loving as so many people claim. Maybe there are actually many pathways to God, or many such gods, and the mystery of
death will be solved differently for each person, depending on their philosophies in life. Maybe there is no such thing as death, but instead a continual rebirth through reincarnation. Maybe, according to a train of thought that has grown in popularity since the 19th century, life is nothing more than a biochemical accident, and death brings with it a never-ending state of nothingness; the most common conclusion drawn from this line of thinking is that there is no God at all.
The mystery of death is so profound that, despite the millennia of religious doctrine, mythology, scientific research, and the many theories and explanations that exist on the subject, people today are more confused than ever about it. Even within individual religious groups there is often a stark difference of opinion on the nature of death. To see this, walk around a cemetery and note the different inscriptions on the tombstones.
Of the roughly 150,000 people who die each day across the globe, about 2/3 die of age-related causes.
The leading cause of human death in developing countries is infectious disease. The leading causes in developed countries are heart disease and stroke, cancer, and other diseases related to obesity and aging.
By extremely wide margin, the largest unifying cause of death in the developed world is biological aging, leading to various complications known as aging-associated diseases. These conditions cause loss of homeostasis, leading to cardiac arrest, causing loss of oxygen and nutrient supply, causing irreversible deterioration of the brain and other tissues. In industrialized nations, the proportion is much higher, approaching 90%. With improved medical capability, dying has become a condition to be managed. Home deaths, once commonplace, are now rare in the developed world. In developing nations, inferior sanitary conditions and lack of access to modern medical technology makes death from infectious diseases more common than in developed countries. Many leading developed world causes of death can be postponed by diet and physical activity, but the accelerating incidence of disease with age still imposes limits on human longevity. The evolutionary cause of aging is, at best, only just beginning to be understood. It has been suggested that direct intervention in the aging process may now be the most effective intervention against major causes of death.
In 2012, suicide overtook car crashes for leading causes of human injury deaths in America, followed by poisoning, falls and murder. Causes of death are different in different parts of the world. In high-income and middle income countries nearly half up to more than two thirds of all people live beyond the age of 70 and predominantly die of chronic diseases. In low-income countries, where less than one in five of all people reach the age of 70, and more than a third of all deaths are among children under 15, people predominantly die of infectious diseases.
OF DEATH
Exactly how we get old and die is still a puzzle. One hypothesis is that because most creatures are killed or die of disease before they can get old, evolution doesn’t weed out the mutations which hurt us in old age.
AGEING
Biological aging is the gradual deterioration of function characteristic of most complex lifeforms, arguably found in all biological kingdoms, that on the level of the organism increases mortality after maturation. The science of biological aging is biogerontology.
Ageing is not the inevitable fate of all organisms and can be delayed. The discovery, in 1934, that calorie restriction can extend lifespan twofold in rats, and the existence of species having negligible senescence and potentially immortal species such as Hydra, have motivated research into delaying and preventing senescence and thus age-related diseases. Organisms of some taxonomic groups (taxa), including some animals, even experience chronological decrease in mortality, for all or part of their life cycle. On the other extreme are accelerated aging diseases, rare in humans.
There is also the extremely rare and poorly understood “Syndrome X,” whereby a person remains physically and mentally an infant or child throughout one’s life. Even if environmental factors do not cause aging, they may affect it; in such a way, for example, overexposure to ultraviolet radiation accelerates skin aging. Different parts of the body may age at different rates. Two organisms of the same species can also age at different rates, so that biological aging and chronological aging are quite distinct concepts.
There are animals that don’t die, or at least don’t die from old age, including a jellyfish and a kind of flatworm.
DISEASE DISEASE DISEASE DISEASE DISEASE
In many cases, terms such as disease, disorder, morbidity and illness are used interchangeably. There are situations however when specific terms are considered preferable.
The term disease broadly refers to any condition that impairs the normal functioning of the body. For this reason, diseases are associated with dysfunctioning of the body’s normal homeostatic process. Commonly, the term disease is used to refer specifically to infectious diseases, which are clinically evident diseases that result from the presence of pathogenic microbial agents, including viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, multicellular organisms, and aberrant proteins known as prions. An infection that does not and will not produce
clinically evident impairment of normal functioing, such as the presence of the normal bacteria and yeasts in the gut, or of a passenger virus, is not considered a disease. By contrast, an infection that is asymptomatic during its incubation period, but expected to produce symptoms later, is usually considered a disease. Non-infectious diseases are all other diseases, including most forms of cancer, heart disease, and genetic disease.
In Cotard’s syndrome, living people believe themselves to be dead.
The leading cause of death worldwide is heart disease.
An organic disease is one caused by a physical or physiological change to some tissue or organ of the body. The term sometimes excludes infections. It is commonly used in contrast with mental disorders. It includes emotional and behavioral disorders if they are due to changes to the physical structures or functioning of the body, such as after a stroke or a traumatic brain injury, but not if they are due to psychosocial issues.
Mental illness is a broad, generic label for a category of illnesses that may include affective or emotional instability, behavioral dysregulation, and/or cognitive dysfunction or impairment. Specific illnesses known as mental illnesses include major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, to name a few. Mental illness can be of biological (e.g., anatomical, chemical, or genetic) or psychological (e.g., trauma or conflict) origin. It can impair the affected person’s ability to work or study and can harm interpersonal relationships. The term insanity is used technically as a legal term.
In an infectious disease, the incubation period is the time between infection and the appearance of symptoms. The latency period is the time between infection and the ability of the disease to spread to another person, which may precede, follow, or be simultaneous with the appearance of symptoms. Some viruses also exhibit a dormant phase, called viral latency, in which the virus hides in the body in an inactive state. For example, varicella zoster virus causes chickenpox in the acute phase; after recovery from chickenpox, the virus may remain dormant in nerve cells for many years, and later cause herpes zoster.
A chronic disease is one that lasts for a long time, usually at least six months. During that time, it may be constantly present, or it may go into remission and periodically relapse. A chronic disease may be stable (does not get any worse) or it may be progressive (gets worse over time). Some chronic diseases can be permanently cured. Most chronic diseases can be beneficially treated, even if they cannot be permanently cured.
Progressive disease is a disease whose typical natural course is the worsening of the disease until death, serious debility, or organ failure occurs. Slowly progressive diseases are also chronic diseases; many are also degenerative diseases. The opposite of progressive disease is stable disease or static disease: a medical condition that exists, but does not get better or worse.
An acute disease is a short-lived disease, like the common cold.
One that has clinical consequences, i.e., the stage of the disease that produces the characteristic signs and symptoms of that disease. AIDS is the clinical disease stage of HIV infection.
A flare-up can refer to either the recurrence of symptoms or an onset of more severe symptoms. Refractory disease A refractory disease is a disease that resists treatment, especially an individual case that resists treatment more than is normal for the specific disease in question.
A cure is the end of a medical condition or a treatment that is very likely to end it, while remission refers to the disappearance, possibly temporarily, of symptoms. Complete remission is the best possible outcome for incurable diseases.
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one’s own death. Suicide is often carried out as a result of despair, the cause of which is frequently attributed to a mental disorder such as depression, schizophrenia, alcoholism or drug abuse, as well as stress factors such as financial difficulties, troubles with relationships, and bullying.
The word is from Latin suicidium, from sui caedere,
“to kill oneself”
Views on suicide have been influenced by broad existential themes such as religion, honor, and the meaning of life. The Abrahamic religions traditionally consider suicide an offense towards God due to the belief in the sanctity of life. During the samurai era in Japan, seppuku was respected as a means of atonement for failure or as a form of protest. Sati, a practice outlawed by the British Raj, expected the Indian widow to immolate herself on her
husband’s funeral pyre, either willingly or under pressure from the family and society. Suicide and attempted suicide, while previously illegal, are no longer in most Western countries. It remains a criminal offense in many countries. In the 20th and 21st centuries, suicide in the form of self-immolation has been used on rare occasions as a medium of protest, and kamikaze and suicide bombings have been used as a military or terrorist tactic.
SUICIDE PREVENTION include limiting access to method of suicide such as firearms and poisons, treating mental illness and drug misuse, and improving economic conditions. Although crisis hotlines are common, there is little evidence for their effectiveness.
The most commonly used method of suicide varies between countries and is partly related to the availability of effective means.
“Near-death experiences� seem to be caused by dopamine and oxygen deprivation
Common methods include: hanging, pesticide poisoning, and firearms. Suicide resulted in 842,000 deaths in 2013. This is up from 712,000 deaths in 1990. This makes it the 10th leading cause of death worldwide. Rates of completed suicides are higher in men than in women, with males three to four times more likely to kill themselves than females. There are an estimated 10 to 20Â million non-fatal attempted suicides every year. Non-fatal suicide attempts may lead to injury and long-term disabilities. In the Western world, attempts are more common in young people and are four times more common in females than in males.
Every man has to go through hell to reach paradise.
NAME ADDRESS
Philosophy of suicide Worldwide
AGE DATE
21
A number of questions are raised within the philosophy of suicide, included what constitutes suicide, whether or not suicide can be a rational choice, and the morality of suicide.
Arguments as to acceptability of suicide in moral or social terms range from the position that the act is inherently immoral and unacceptable under any circumstances to a regard for suicide as a sacrosanct right of anyone who believes they have rationally and conscientiously come to the decision to end their own lives, even if they are young and healthy. Opponents to suicide include Christian philosophers such as Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant and, arguably, John Stuart Mill – Mill’s focus on the importance of liberty and autonomy meant that he
rejected choices which would prevent a person from making future autonomous decisions. Others view suicide as a legitimate matter of personal choice. Supporters of this position maintain that no one should be forced to suffer against their will, particularly from conditions such as incurable disease, mental illness, and old age, with no possibility of improvement. They reject the belief that suicide is always irrational, arguing instead that it can be a valid last resort for those enduring major pain or trauma. A stronger stance would argue that people should be allowed to autonomously choose to die regardless of whether they are suffering.
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Health
In an ecosystem, predation is a biological interaction where a predator, an organism that is hunting, feeds on its prey, the organism that is attacked
PRED PREDA PREDAT PREDATI PREDATIO PREDATION Predators may or may not kill their prey, prior to feeding on them, but the act of predation often results in the death of the prey and the eventual absorption of the prey’s tissue through consumption. Thus predation is often, though not always, carnivory. It can often be difficult to separate various types of feeding behaviors. For example, some parasitic species prey on a host organism and then lay their eggs on it for their offspring to feed on it while it continues to live in or on its decaying corpse after it has died. The key characteristic of predation however is the predator’s direct impact on the prey population. On the other hand, detritivores simply eat dead organic material arising from the decay of dead individuals and have no direct impact on the “donor” organism.
Selective pressures imposed on one another often leads to an evolutionary arms race between prey and predator, resulting in various antipredator adaptations. Ways of classifying predation surveyed here include grouping by trophic level or diet, by specialization, and by the nature of the predator’s interaction with prey.
Other consumption categories are: herbivory - eating parts of plants, mycophagy eating parts of fungi, detritivory - the consumption of dead organic material. All these consumption categories fall under the rubric of consumerresource systems.
Homicide occurs when one human being causes the death of another human being. Homicides can be divided into many overlapping types, including murder, manslaughter, justifiable homicide, killing in war, euthanasia, and execution, depending on the circumstances of the death. These different types of homicides are often treated very differently in human societies; some are considered crimes, while others are permitted or even ordered by the legal system.
Criminal homicide takes many forms including accidental or purposeful murder. The crime committed in a criminal homicide is determined by the mental state of the committing person and the extent of the crime. Murder, for example, is usually an intentional crime. In many cases, homicide may in fact lead to life in prison and or even capital punishment, but if the defendant in a capital case is sufficiently mentally disabled in the United States he or she cannot be executed. Instead, the individual is placed under the category of “insane”. In some jurisdictions, a homicide
that occurs during the commission of a crime may constitute murder, regardless of the actor’s intent to commit homicide. In the United States, this is known as the felony murder rule. Much abbreviated and incomplete, the felony murder rule says that one committing a felony may be guilty of murder if someone, including the felony victim, a bystander or a cofelon, dies as a result of his acts, regardless his intent—or lack thereof—to kill. Criminal homicides also include voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. An example of voluntary manslaughter is hitting
someone with an intent to kill them, whereas involuntary manslaughter is unintentionally causing their death. The perpetrator does not receive the same legal action against them as a person convicted of murder. While most homicides by civilians are criminally prosecutable, a right of selfdefense (often including the right to defend others) is widely recognized, including, in dire circumstances, the use of deadly force.
“I don’t want to die without any scars” ~ Fight Club
“Shi”
“They got money for wars but can’t feed the poor”
STARVATION
Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy intake needed to maintain human life. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, death. Starvation may also be used as a means of torture or execution. According to the World Health Organization, hunger is the single gravest threat to the world’s public health. The WHO also states that malnutrition is by far the biggest contributor to child mortality, present in half of all cases. Undernutrition is a contributo ry factor in the death of 3.1 million children under five every year. Figures on actual starvation are difficult to come by, but according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the less severe condition of undernourishment currently affects about 842 million people, or about one in eight (12.5%) people in the world population.
The bloated stomach, as seen in the picture to the right, represents a form of malnutrition called kwashiorkor which is caused by insufficient protein despite a sufficient caloric intake. Children are more vulnerable to kwashiorkor, advanced symptoms of which include weight loss and muscle wasting.
DEHYDRATION DEHYDRATION DEHYDRATION DEHYDRATION DEHYDRATION DEHYDRATION DEHYDRATION DEHYDRATION DEHYDRATION DEHYDRATION DEHYDRATION DEHYDRATION DEHYDRATION
Dehydration refers to a deficit of total body water, with an accompanying disruption of metabolic processes. Dehydration is also a cause for hypernatremia. The term dehydration must be distinguished from hypovolemia (loss of blood volume).
Dehydration occurs when free water loss exceeds free water intake, usually due to exercise or disease. Most people can tolerate a three to four percent decrease in total body water without difficulty or adverse health effects. A five to eight percent decrease can cause fatigue and dizziness. Loss of over ten percent of total body water can cause physical and mental deterioration, accompanied by severe thirst. A decrease of more than fifteen to twenty-five percent of the body water is invariably fatal. Mild dehydration is characterized by thirst and general discomfort and is usually resolved with oral rehydration.
The leading cause of death among young people in the developed world is car accidents. 7000 people die each year because of doctor’s sloppy handwriting.
An accident is an undesirable incidental and unplanned event that could have been prevented had circumstances leading up to the accident been recognized, and acted upon, prior to its occurrence. Most scientists who study unintentional injury avoid using the term “accident� and focus on factors that increase risk of severe injury and that reduce injury incidence and severity .
Death in Shakespeare In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, death is a theme that Shakespeare explores in depth, throughout the play. Shakespeare captures the reader’s interest concerning death in the opening scene, when Hamlet is visited by the ghost of his dead father.
This scene sets the tone of the entire play where death, murder, revenge and suicide are played out over and over again. Hamlet not only has to work through how to avenge his father’s death, but also has to deal with his own feelings and fears about death.
“To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover’d country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.--Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember’d!”
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
To be, or not to be, that’s the question.
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