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Sure there is.

If your blood has been drained and there is no brain activity, then you are not alive, correct? And by today's standards most doctors would mark you as dead and ship you off to the morgue.

The concept of death can be challenged because dead really means 100% unable to bring back to life. It's not possible to bring dead people back to life, so people who are not alive, but not 100% dead beyond the point of no return, still have a chance to be alive again.

Basically there are two meanings of dead: "no neural activity" and "irreparable damage to the brain", if there is simply no neural activity but the brain is still physically intact, then you're in a pseudo-dead state.




What's the point of lumping a reversible state with an irreversible one under the same term?


Languages can evolve, but I personally had zero say in the multiple meaning of the word.

What do you propose we call it? Pre-dead? Suspended?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death is the best we have but because it contains the word "death" it's far from perfect.




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