• Question: Why can't you return to life to a person before the cells start to die?

    Asked by Nachoparra to Ceri, Marikka, Matt, Rob, Sally on 11 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Sally Cutler

      Sally Cutler answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      This is not really my area, but you have to think why they died too. If there was something very wrong, even if you brought them back to life, you would not have fixed the problem. Afraid we were not designed to last for ever.

    • Photo: Robert Hampson

      Robert Hampson answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      It depends why they died.

      If you watch hospital programmes on TV, then often you see the patients heart stop and then they try to use electricity to shock it into starting again. However, if they can’t shock it into starting again, within 10 minutes the brain is already rapidly dying because the blood isn’t pumping oxygen and glucose to it and its waste isn’t being taken away. Ten minutes simply isn’t enough time to attach an external pump and often there are many other things wrong too so probably wouldn’t solve the problem. We often probably could keep some parts of them “alive” for a while, but once their brain has died the only reason they (very rarely) do this is to keep organs fresh for transplant to other patients.

      If you think of the body like a car, if the clutch is broken, the doors have fallen off, the steering doesn’t work and the battery has no charge. You may be able to get it to move, but it is going to be useless as a car…

    • Photo: Ceri Dare

      Ceri Dare answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Well, if one bit of someone has gone wrong, then we can sometimes fix or replace that bit – like someone who has diabetes from a broken pancreas taking insulin. But as people get older then more bits of them start to break down, and some illnesses like cancer can spread to affect many parts of the body. So sometimes there is just too much damage.

      In Israel, because Jewish law says that somebody isn’t dead until their heart has stopped beating, people who have many things wrong with them can be left on life support with machines keeping their body working for a long time. The Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has a massive stroke in 2006, and it soon became clear that he was never going to wake up, but they kept his body going until 2014.

      This is a complicated area which people have a lot of different opinions on. What do you think? How far would you go to stay alive?

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