medical definition: The irreversible cessation of all cell function. Then she informed him that the official medical definition was 100 percent incorrect. “Death,” she explained, “has nothing to do with the physical body. We define death in terms of consciousness. Consider a brain-dead, nonresponsive patient on life support—his body is technically very much alive, and yet we routinely pull the plug on that body. Without consciousness, we view a human body as essentially dead…even when its physical functions are perfectly intact.”
