HOME |
RSS | 
by Mike Dubik, MD
Brian Wood, MD
For hundreds, if not thousands, of years it has been accepted as an axiom that inanimate objects, such as nails, are dead. This self-evident truth has been expressed in the phrase: “dead as a doornail.” Thus, someone who is unequivocally dead is said to be “dead as a doornail.”
Advanced life support technology now allows us to maintain the heart and lung’s functionality in patients who no longer have any brain function. This ability has created legal, moral and religious conundrums. Until a generation ago, these problems were solely the domain of a few ethicists who entertained them as theoretical exercises.
However, now most states have laws concerning brain death. The American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, the American Neurological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics came together and formed a Special Task Force1,2,3,4 and have endorsed the following as a definition of death: Irreversible cessation of all function of the entire brain, including the brain stem.
If the definition of death as expressed by the AMA et al has validity, it should be possible to compare this recent criteria against the widely accepted and time-tested “doornail” standard. We did just that.
We subjected a large doornail (see Figure 1) that was forged in 1986 to thorough examination, prolonged close observation, and an electroencephalogram (EEG).
Our Findings
The doornail was repeatedly examined and closely observed over a 24 hour period.
1. The nail did not exhibit any vocalizations of volitional activity.
2. The nail evidenced no spontaneous eye movements; neither could respiratory movements be detected.
3. There was no evidence of postural activity (decerebrate or decorticate).
4. The nail made no spontaneous or induced movements whatsoever. Thus, the nail met the “physical examination” criteria of death.3.4
A well-executed and reliably read electroencephalogram is a useful adjunct in the diagnosis of brain death. We performed a 30-minute EEG to document electrocerebral silence (see Figure 2). As is of ten the case with small children, it was not possible to meet the standard requirement for 10 cm electrode separation. Instead, the inter-electrode distance was decreased proportionally to the size of the nail’s head. The EEG was isoelectric, i.e. flat. Further, there was no electrical response to rousing stimuli. When we subjected the doornail to rousing stimuli, there was no response.
We conclude that the criteria for death as described in modem medical literature 1,2,3.4 is valid and may be used with confidence by clinicians.
References
1. “Determination of brain death,” Ad Hoc Committee on Brain Death (The Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA), Journal of Pediatrics, vol. 110, January, 1987, pp. 15-19.
2. “Guidelines for the determination of death,” President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, Washington, DC, Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 246, 1981, p. 2184.
3. Report of a Special Task Force: Guidelines for the Determination of Brain Death in Children,” Pediatrics, 1987, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 298-300.
4. “Guidelines for the Determination of Brain Death in Children,” Task Force for the Determination of Brain Death in Children, Neurology, vol. 37, June, 1987, pp. 1077-8.
5. You should see the door it came from.
6. The patient was seven years old at the time of the study.
(Title image credit: Flickr user topher76)
__________________________
This article is republished with permission from the November-December 1995 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!
Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
The remains of Bolivia’s dead get to see the light of day once more during the Day of the Skulls, when the skulls of the loved ones are dug up and paraded around town.
They are decorated with flowers and coca leaves, given cigarettes and sunglasses to make them look stylish, and lavished with praise by citizens who believe this celebration makes their afterlife more enjoyable. A celebration of life that centers around the skulls dead loved ones, sounds like a strange way to par-tay!
Link –image via Reuters/David Mercado
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader.
Have you ever participated in a séance or tried to contact the “spirits” using a Ouija board? You probably don’t realize it, but the modern conception of communicating with the dead only dates back to the late 1840s. Here’s the story of the hoax that started spirit-mania.
BUMP IN THE NIGHT
In 1848 a devout Methodist farmer named John Fox and his family began to hear strange noises in their Hydesville, New York, farmhouse. The noises continued for weeks on end, until finally on one particularly noisy evening, Mrs. Fox ordered the two children, 13-year-old Margaret and 12-year-old Kate, to stay perfectly quiet in bed while Mr. Fox searched the house from top to bottom. His search shed no light on the mystery, but afterward, Margaret sat up in bed and snapped her fingers, exclaiming, “Here, Mr. Split-foot, do as I do!”
“The reply was immediate,” Earl Fornell writes in The Unhappy Medium: Spiritualism and the Life of Margaret Fox. “The invisible rapper responded by imitating the number of the girl’s staccato responses.”
Mrs. Fox began to make sense of what she was hearing. “Count ten,” she told the spirit. It responded with ten raps. So she asked several questions; each time the spirit answered correctly. Next, Mrs. Fox asked the spirit if it would rap if a neighbor was present; the spirit said yes. So Mr. Fox ran and got a neighbor, the first of more than 500 neighbors and townspeople who visited over the next few weeks to watch Margaret and Kate interact with the spirit. As long as either Margaret or Kate was present, the spirit was willing to communicate.
MURDER MYSTERY
Using an alphabetic code that Margaret and Kate devised, “Mr. Split-foot” explained that in his Earthly life he’d been a peddler, murdered by the person who lived in the farmhouse. The spirit identified the killer as “C. R.” Some citizens tracked down a man named Charles Rosana, who’d lived in the house years earlier, but with no body and no evidence other than the testimony of a ghost, he was never charged.
more …
Comments Off
It takes something special to make local TV ads stand out, and Ojai Valley Taxidermy has accomplished that. Chuck Testa doesn’t mince words -he specializes in making dead animals appear lifelike. Even when they’re in bed with you. If you have the stomach for taxidermy work, you can also check out Chuck’s Tuesday Tips on YouTube. This ad was produced by Rhett and Link. -via The Daily What
Losing a pet is losing a best friend who lived with you, so of course you want to remember him. However, the way you do it isn’t proscribed by tradition the way human memorials are. So a wide variety of creative businesses have sprung up to cater to the bereaved pet owner -some you may think are quite bizarre. You can have a personal item made from your pet’s ashes, or even its fur! Pictured are jewelry items made by Kate Benjamin from pet fur. Read about this and nine other strange pet memorials at Oddee. Link
Dead Stop Zombie Doorstop (Crawling) – $19.95
The Zombie invasion is in full swing here at the NeatoShop. We are excited to announce that the Dead Stop Zombie Doorstop (Crawling) has just broken into the warehouse. Our shelves are now filled with gruesome corpses.
Do not panic! This crawling zombie is here to stop that annoying door right in its tracks. Now you can have your very own undead friend hold the door open for you. Who knew Zombies could be so helpful!
Get your Dead Stop Zombie Doorstop (Crawling) from the NeatoShop now. You don’t want to be left behind. Can you really survive without one?
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more Zombie fun!
Comments Off 
The Magnetic Dead 3D Zombie Magnets – $14.95
We were warned, but nothing could truly prepare us for the massive zombie outbreak currently taking place at the NeatoShop. It is the end of the world as we know it! The Magnetic Dead 3D Zombie Magnets have finally arrived! AHHHHHHHHND we cannot contain our excitement over the launch of this new gruesomely fantastic line!
Do not be afraid! This 10-piece refrigerator magnet corpse is not just another useless Zombie toy. This flesh eating monster is always there when you need a hand, or a foot. You can use his body parts to hang up notes. When work has become mind numbingly dull you can spend hours upon hours mixing, matching, and dancing around his body parts. The Magnetic Dead 3D Zombie is your key to survival.
Get your Magnetic Dead 3D Zombie from the NeatoShop now. You don’t want to be left scavenging for one later. Can you really live without one?
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more Zombie fun!
Comments Off We don’t yet know a lot about the movie Night of the Little Dead, except that it stars Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller) and Adam Savage (of Mythbusters), but that is enough to make me want to see it! Link
The further we get into October, the creepier the internet becomes. From WebUrbanist, we have a list of cemeteries that made chills go up our spines while watching the movies. Some are purely fictional, some were filmed at real cemeteries, and some were based on real stories of cemeteries. Shown is a cemetery scene from National Treasure. Link
Comments Off 
The problem with being dead and buried – besides all that rotting flesh stuff – is that it’s darned lonely to spend all of eternity by oneself.
Thankfully, inventor Jeff Dannenberg took care of the problem with this nifty and patented invention:
An apparatus and method for generating post-burial audio communications from surviving friends and loved ones in a casket by providing a burial
casket, and providing an electronic audio communication system for placement in said casket to automatically electronically generate post-burial communications in said casket.
This way, you can continue wish the dead "Happy Birthday," "Merry Christmas," "Happy Anniversary" until the end of time. Or until the battery runs out, whichever is first.
Link – Thanks Martin g!
Previously on Neatorama: Patently Silly Animal Patents | Top 10 Strangest Anti-Terrorism Patents
For some, there’s no rest even in death. Read these crazy stories about the experiences of seven dead bodies. For example, pianist André Tchaíkowsky made his Shakespearean debut after his death.
Despite his demise in 1982 André Tchaíkowsky has recently starred in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet in the role of Yorick alongside David Tennant, one of the most famous actors in Britain. Those of you who know a bit about Shakespeare have figured it out by now; for the rest of you: Yorick is not a speaking role, he is a skull. Mr. Tchaikowsky had to die to play the role, which is some serious method acting (top that Sean Penn). In his will Tchaikowsky left his skull to the RSC for use in plays. While many actors playing Hamlet have rehearsed with his skull before, Tennant was the first to actually use it during live performances. Creepy.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
You can learn a lot from science fiction. For example, you should not try to bring someone back from the dead because they will try to kill you. Proof comes from seven different stories that send chills down our spines.
Pet Sematary: Any dead creature buried in the ancient Micmac burial ground comes back to life, just not quite the way you put it in. After losing his young son Gage, Louis buries his son in the graveyard. Sure enough, Gage comes back — and promptly murders his mother.
That’s only one of ten reasons not to resurrect dead bodies. Link -via Gorilla Mask
