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Introduction
Published in Gerry R. Cox, Neil Thompson, Death and Dying, 2020
The principles, concepts, and theories of sociology offer the opportunity to: Examine death management practices in different cultures (disposal of the deceased, for example);Analyze the profession roles of funeral directors, clergy, medical staff, social workers, and other caregivers as they relate to dying and death;Consider the impact of dying and death on work environments, schools, and institutions;Compare ancient and modern death management practices, attitudes, and values as related to dying and death; social death, legal death, biological death, and personal death;Explore the violent nature of society and its impact on grief, theories of suicide and suicide prevention;Examine the impact of religion on death management practices and grief processes;Consider ethical issues relating to dying and death; and many, many more areas of interest to a sociologist.
What happens when we die?
Published in Peter Hutton, Ravi Mahajan, Allan Kellehear, Death, Religion and Law, 2019
Peter Hutton, Ravi Mahajan, Allan Kellehear
Legal death is the time at which society records that the person is dead. It has considerable practical consequences. In the UK a person is legally dead when a person authorized to say you are dead does so. In some circumstances there may be a delay of hours or days between physiological and legal death. Particular problems continue to arise when relatives see a person pass away just before midnight, yet their legal time of death was when they were certified dead in the early hours of the following day: the relatives receive a death certificate recording the death as when it was certified, but they want to remember the day they saw them die as the date of death.
Forensic Pathophysiology of Asphyxial Death
Published in Sudhir K. Gupta, Forensic Pathology of Asphyxial Deaths, 2022
‘Asphyxia’ is a condition that results in lack of oxygen in blood, which may be due to mechanical interference in its uptake, transportation or cellular utilization, which means cellular oxidation. In forensic literature, asphyxia is considered as one of the modes of death, the other two being coma and syncope. Death due to asphyxia represents the majority of the case load in almost all centers conducting medico-legal autopsies in India. A similar scenario is seen in countries that share a similar socio-demographic profile. Despite there being no definite classification system and detailed treatises on asphyxial deaths in forensic practice, deaths due to asphyxia are the cases that are routinely seen to involve the maximum ambiguity at each step in medico-legal death investigation. Relatives, neighbors or friends of the decedent, the society at large and even the officers of the investigating agencies involved often raise their eyebrows at the conclusions reached by the autopsy surgeon. Such incidents are seen to occur even after one has conducted the complex autopsy by carefully and systematically documenting and interpreting the postmortem findings. He may have preserved viscera to rule out intoxication and corroborate one's opinion via reliable forensic analysis of any recovered fibers so as to definitely match it to the alleged used material that has been examined by qualified forensic scientists for its tensile properties. All these need to be corroborated while giving due consideration to all circumstantial evidences available for perusal, including statements of all concerned persons and a detailed scene of occurrence examination.
Likely and Looming? The Labyrinthine ELSI Landscape of Copying Consciousness
Published in AJOB Neuroscience, 2023
Jacob Freund, Guy Halevi, Hila Tavdi, Dov Greenbaum
Perhaps the most crucial ethical issue related to copying consciousness is the need to redefine the concept of death. The legal definition of death has evolved in response to technological advances, with a focus on the cessation of critical bodily functions. Previously, legal death was defined as cardiac death, but technological advancements in the mid-twentieth century allowed for continued life even after cardiac failure. This prompted a revised definition of death as the irreversible cessation of all brain function, including the brainstem. In the 1980s, the US Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) defined death as either the irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions or the irreversible cessation of all brain function, including the brainstem (Sarbey 2016).
Involuntary MDMB-4en-PINACA intoxications following cannabis consumption: clinical and analytical findings
Published in Clinical Toxicology, 2022
Ruben Goncalves, Magali Labadie, Simon Chouraqui, Alexandre Peyré, Nadège Castaing, Amélie Daveluy, Mathieu Molimard
Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug worldwide [4] and an increase use was reported during the first lockdown period of the COVID-19 pandemic in some countries [5,6]. Since October 2020, several alerts on the presence of SCRAs in cannabis samples have been issued in Switzerland [7] and in France since October 2020 [8,9]. Several European countries have been alerted after low-THC cannabis products were reported to be adulterated with the SCRA MDMB-4en-PINACA (5-CL-ADB-A, methyl 3,3-di- methyl-2-[1-(pent-4-en-1-yl)-1H-indazole-3-carboxamido] butanoate). This New Psychoactive Substance (NPS) is a SCRA that was first identified in powders seized by the German police in 2017 [10]. It was officially notified to the European Union (EU) Early Warning System (EWS) in August 2018 [11]. Information on this NPS including its pharmacology and toxicity is largely unknown, apart from comments on online drug forums. However, based on the study of its structural analogs, the drug is likely to be a highly potent and efficacious agonist on the CB1 and CB2 cannabinoid receptors [12,13]. The detection of MDMB-4en-PINACA in medico-legal death investigation casework coupled with limited case history suggest that these new SCRAs can have significant physiological effects and may cause or contribute to death [11,12,14]. While MDMB-4en-PINACA is potentially highly toxic, only a few studies have discussed its clinical presentation, none has yet investigated it in the context of cannabis consumption. This study presents the identification of MDMB-4en-PINACA in cannabis consumers with clinical and analytical descriptions.