Talk:Death

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Skip to Table of Contents

This article is a current candidate for the Article Creation and Improvement Drive. Please see the project page to find this article's entry to support or comment on the nomination.

To-do list for Death:	edit · history · watch · refresh
Here are some tasks you can do:

Death has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

	This article has been identified by the Version 1.0 Editorial Team as a Core Topic, one of the 150 most important articles for any encyclopedia to have. Please help improve this article as we push to 1.0. If you'd like help with this article, you may nominate it for the core topics collaboration.
Start	Death has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale.

Remember that article talk pages are provided to coordinate the article's improvement, not for engaging in discussion for discussion's sake. Do not use them as a discussion forum.

This article has been selected for Version 0.5 and the next release version of Wikipedia. This Natsci article has been rated Start-Class on the assessment scale.

edit

Archives

October 2002 – August 2004 August 2004 – September 2006

Contents 1 RfC - Abortion and Miscarriages listed as human deaths 1.1 Responses 2 procedures and results 3 Consciousness after death 4 The Odor of death 5 Quality of the article 6 More Vandalism 7 considering how popular 8 Need Death (legal) 9 Expand? 10 Evolution and death 11 How organisms respond to death 12 Death in non-human species

[edit] RfC - Abortion and Miscarriages listed as human deaths

This has been an ongoing dispute (see above). Previously, under the section regarding causes of human deaths, abortions and miscarriages were added. These were then moved to a 'prenatal deaths' section, which was then re-named 'prenatal statistics' and recently details were added to be clear that these are nowhere officially considered human deaths. Currently the dispute is between a small number of editors. The main points being.

1) Are abortions and miscarriages deaths?

2) If so, can they be considered human deaths?

3) The article deals primarily with human death - if it is not agreed that they are human deaths, should they appear in the topic at all? 13:36, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Responses

Doing a statistic on "miscarriages" is impossible. What do we include? Early embryo death? Ectopic pregnancies? Teratomas? While the ethical/ideological consideration of these events as "human deaths" is a matter of POV, the number reported in the article is highly debatable and should be omitted.   Andreas   ^(T) 16:06, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

While anything that touches on the abortion debate is likely to be heated, Wikipedia must rely on published sources. If no country lists abortions and miscarriages as deaths then that topic would seem to fall outside the scope of this article. The only exception I can imagine is in murder trials where the murderer of a pregnant woman is sometimes charged with an additional homicide. I do not know whether such convictions (excuse the pun) survive on appeal. Durova 16:19, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Keep the following definition of Abortion in mind when considering if this is a form of "human death", or not. Quote:An abortion is the removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus from the uterus, resulting in, or caused by, its death.End Quote ^rossnixon 02:07, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

According to Oklahoma Criminal Law passed in 2005, the fetus is a human. Most refs to this are slow loading PDF files, so no ref added here yet. ^rossnixon 09:53, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

According to Oklahoma Criminal Law? - this is a worldwide wikipedia, not Oklahoma.gov/wiki It seems that everyone, except ross, does not think these should be included - I will remove them, unless more people deem it right to include it here... --Cooper-42 11:49, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

You have to give valid reasons why the information is either inappropriate or incorrect before it is removed. Oh, and Texas and California law is similar. I'm sure I could find similar law from other countries too if I looked; perhaps catholic and moslem majority countries. There was no consensus to remove the section. I will put it back, but change the heading back to "Statistics" temporarily.! ^rossnixon 01:33, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I personally believe this should be titled something that leaves out the word "death." It needs to assume some sort of middle ground, such as a title like "Dispute" or "Controversy." Let's not forget that an individual does not always have the capacity to write in a neutral tone, so what is best for this article's section probably won't be decided by one person.

With response to Rossnixon, as I understand it, the controversy is if or when embryos and fetuses are human, or to what degree. If someone does not consider the embryo fully human, or without a soul, then its death would be less than that of a person. The whole controversy is really when the baby becomes a proper person. Is it at the moment of conception? The moment the brain begins to function independently? The moment it breathes? Does it matter? Should we treat it equally anyway? Is the mother's future worth more than the baby's? The way I see it, even hinting at any type of answer to these questions violate's wikipedia's NPOV, but ignoring them and removing the content makes the issue seem dismissable (hence, pro-choice), so it still has to be kept in. But advertising it makes it pro-life.

My idea is that we give a range for the statistics based on multiple sources. Using some sort of pro-whatever site probably isn't the best idea, government statistics would be best. After all, propoganda is published, but we don't use it as a reference for statistics. I suspect that the numbers would be skewed, and vary depending on how many miscarriages/abortions/epotopic preganancies are considered a death in that particular group. If you look on wikipedia at articles on languages where the number of speakers is contested, they list a range and multiple sources which cover either extreme. I think this would be a good idea.

And with regards to vocabulary, it must be stressed that different people consider fetal and embryonic death different things, sometimes human, and sometimes not.

You can't have "a degree of being human". "Human" is a species designation!

As far as sources go, these have been checked out as acceptably neutral to all sides. ^rossnixon 01:33, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I hope this helps. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 21:40, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I wouldn't really call this an RFC. You can file a proper article RFC if you want to, but they are frequently a pain in the ass and a source of angry resignations and civility blocks. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 21:49, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually I came to this article through the RfC page and this RfC seems as "proper" as any other. On further consideration I suppose it might be worthwhile to have a section on the subject, if people are willing to source it, and move some of the material from this talk page into that section: no country keeps statistics on this - there are difficulties in definition - yet in certain places (with citations) the murder of a pregnant woman can be prosecuted as two murders. That seems fair and NPOV. Durova 12:35, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

There seems to be a fundamental tension between this article being, as it claims in the first sentence, about the biological process of death, and about the role of death in cultures. If we define the scope of this article to be the biological process and cultural implications of that process, then the relevant question is whether the a fetus ceasing to be alive qualifies as biological death. The answer to this is, in my view, obvious. A fetus is a biological human entity, and it dies just as any other biological human entity dies. When a sperm dies, it dies. When a skin cell dies, it dies. When tissues in a gangrenous limb die, they die. The article addresses human cell death, and cells are hardly persons (according to most people, at least), so it would seem odd to argue that the death of other non-personal human entities, such as (according to some) fetuses, should be excluded. The issue of when a fetus becomes a person is irrelevant. If we are indifferent to issues of personhood, then a fetal death is biologically like the death of any other thing human, be it sperm, infant, or adult. Statistics on fetal deaths are thus perfectly appropriate to feature in the article. The cultural implications of death, however, are based on the death of an individual, a person. Since different cultures and subcultures construe personhood differently, then this should be noted if the article is to be based on the biological death of persons, rather than simply the biological death of human entities.--Atemperman 00:24, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I applaud this perceptive reading. Durova 15:29, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I've been in enough editorial disputes already this month, so I'm not going to get heavily involved here. I would just like to point out that, since the passage of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, the murder of a woman/mother and her fetus is legally a double homicide throughout the United States of America. Which is a somewhat more globally significant entity than the great state of Oklahoma. Also, Atemperman, it would be utterly impossible to find a biologist who calls sperm "human." Fetuses, person or not, are members of species homo sapiens, meeting all the biological critera for both life and membership within the species. Sperm are just cells, which have the potential to do half the work of forming a new human. And a skin cell, in and of itself, is no more human than a slab of galena.--BCSWowbagger 03:57, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Let me give a try answering point to point here. Just MHO

1) Are abortions and miscarriages deaths?

No. An answer based on and justified by the wikipedia article on Birth and the undisputed fact that death cannot occur before birth. If somebody has a different answer, (s)he should consider modifying the Birth article first. Sorry, if I did add to the trouble here :)

2) If so, can they be considered human deaths?

Unfortunately the "If so" in the question does not conclusively decide whether they can be; and I believe that to be the fallacy in the motion here. I mean, the answer to the first question by itself does not imply the answer for this. An abortion is an explicit action that affects the normal course which if uninhibited would result in the event of Birth. So that makes the question prone to context sensitivity.

3) The article deals primarily with human death - if it is not agreed that they are human deaths, should they appear in the topic at all?

Ideally no(atleast based on the first question). But alternatively, one feels it may not be wrong to provide verified figures of clinical abortions etc in the section describing the figures against various causes of death. The reader can compare the figures and make own understandings about the impact of these debated actions. However it would be wrong to insert the section there just to imply that abortion falls under death. --Su30 14:27, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

May I suggest to everyone here, having seen this on RfC, that you won't answer this question until the abortion question is answered. It relies on wether or not the unborn child is considered alive or not. (If they're alive, they have to die to stop being alive. If they were never alive, they couldn't have died.) I'd suggest avoiding the issue alltogether. There's already enough coverage of the social debate on wikipedia, it doesn't need to spread to this article. However, I would have to say that if it were birth/death ratios, you wouldn't include the prenatal statistics. Again, all that's going to be accomplished by this discussion is to continue the Abortion debate. I suggest directing the reader there, they can settle it in their minds until the social debate is settled. Kevin_b_er 15:35, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Re: "the undisputed fact that death cannot occur before birth." I dispute it. Somewhere between one-third and two-thirds of Americans dispute it (I don't know about worldwide); see pro-life, pro-choice, or abortion debate. Most importantly, it is false. Read almost any dictionary's definition of "life." Furthermore, the Birth article at no point makes any claims about the nature of death death. Furthermore, even if it did, citing an uncited Wikipedia article is not evidence. --BCSWowbagger 01:42, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

It looks, you mean to say this approx 1/3 to 2/3 is Pro-life. Well, Pro-life(i dont mean the Church) primarily is opposed to intented destruction of embryo but it does not attempt to(or need to) challenge the meanings already attributed to words like death. They equates the destruction of an embryo to taking away a born life and personally I see a point and yeah that is a big debate. Like Kevin_b_er above, I too feel the debate need not be taken to this article and instead the article can limit to mentioning the existance of the debate and linking to it. Also with respect to figures, since the WHO report table does not provide figures for Homicide, may be the figures for Clinical Abortion also need not be provided; but those for Miscarriage(if can be sourced correctly) can be. --Su30 08:15, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

"it does not attempt to(or need to) challenge the meanings already attributed to words like death." No. But you are. Death is the cessation of life. Pro-lifers believe that life begins at conception. Pro-lifers believe abortion causes death. It is a debate; that's why the stats in this article are kept separate from the main stats. This content is fully appropriate to the article, partly because disinclusion is just going to cause NPOV disputes from now to eternity, whereas we have a decent balance right now. I will accept consensus decision; however, you really have to get your facts straight, Su. There is no debate over whether fetal death is a death. The abortion argument, which more-or-less evenly divides the United States, at least, concerns whether fetal death is human death. While placing these "prenatal deaths" in a separate section is a justified acknowledgement of the controversy, removing all reference to that debate would be POV, and I further argue that reducing it to only a link to abortion debate (a link with no statistics, no less!) would also be inappropriate. --BCSWowbagger 20:31, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

My last was not a minor edit. Misclicked. Apologies. --BCSWowbagger 20:31, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

The ethical debate regarding abortion has no relevence to this article. Miscarriage and abortion are significant factors causing death and should be included. Pendragon39 03:36, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

From the RFC: The debate regarding abortion as death vs. medical procedure should be mentioned. The statistics should not be included as "Leading causes of human death," as that is a POV. JBKramer 18:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

The debate should not be mentioned, only linked to. It is not POV to include causes of human death in Death. ^rossnixon 00:46, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

This will be my last comment here - however, it is patently obvious that rossnixon is evangelizing his POV on this article, not attempting to inform. JBKramer 15:04, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

How these statistics affect the abortion debate is not the concern of this article. Factual information related to causes of death should not be censored! Pendragon39 00:31, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] procedures and results

An abortion procedure can be experienced without a pregnancy condition, and therefore there is no death. Such procedures are also labeled using the term 'menstrual extraction', which also should cause no death. 15:32, 23 August 2006 (UTC) beadtot

Actually, since an ME does cause the cessation of biological function within a human blastocyst or embryo (see menstrual extraction), that is a death. The definition of pregnancy itself is far fuzzier than that of death; see beginning of pregnancy controversy. --BCSWowbagger 20:24, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Consciousness after death

I found this in an HTML comment:

The following is fringe science, it needs to be rewritten to reflect that fact: Scientific research conducted over more than a decade (90's) in hospitals among survivors of cardiac arrest have provided already strong evidence that consciousness survives the death of the physical body. The most known research in the medical community conducted by Dutch cardiologist Pim Van Lommel ^{[1] [2]} was published by the leading medical peer-reviewed magazine The Lancet. On the other hand, worldwide research conducted by professor of psychiatry Ian Stevenson since the 60's, with over 3000 study cases, offers convincing scientific evidence for reincarnation. These studies ^{[3] [4]} have been published for the academic and scientific community and the writings are densely packed with research details and academic argument difficult for the average reader to follow. The implications in the science paradigm and the resistance of societies toward new scientific research and discoveries related to event 'death' and the survival of consciousness are already upon debate among the academic scientific community ^{[5] [6]}.

It is also very interesting to observe what spiritual teachers have said about death and the purpose of it. Issues such as "Where is God in the death process?" [1], "How can I prepare for death?" [2] and "How can I help someone who is dying?" [3] are important topics they have extensively investigated.

A summary of afterlife might also be helpful. -- Beland 07:32, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Whenever a living organism dies, its physiological 'shade' or image is perpetuated in animal memory -- perhaps with intent to replicate. The same is surely true if a human fetus dies resulting from an abortion. 04:10, 17 September 2006 (UTC) beadtot

There is no evidence for conciousness after death because nobody who has "come back from the dead" had truly died. Brain death had not set in. Any experiences that occur during flatline events (near death experiences) are not valid data for proof of life after death for that reason. They are merely the result of the chemistry of an oxygen-starved, but still living, brain. The question of life after death is one that cannot be answered by current medical science and can only be debated from a philosophical point of view. While near death experiences may or may not be evidence for a conciousness that can survive the destruction of the physical body, the fact remains that nobody who has been truly dead has ever been in a position to talk about it as death is, by definition, irreversible.

[edit] The Odor of death

I am mainly wanting to ask opinions, "Does a human being approaching death from a cancer illness have a death odor before their death"

[edit] Quality of the article

This article needs some major work as I see it, I have tagged a lot in the article what's need to be done (a bit much perhaps, but...) _→AzaToth 01:21, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

It certainly needed (and still needs) cleaning up. You'd think an article like this looks very neat and professional. Well, i made some major structural changes; death in culture, death in populair culture, personification and such things are moved to their own articles. Also I moved a couple of sections to more appropriate places. It still needs revision, but it looks a lot better allready. Wehn all the rubish is gone, we can start building an actual article on death seen in a scientific persective. I'll continue working on this some other time.--Vincent de Ruijter 02:37, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More Vandalism

More vandamlism.....AGAIN this time its some sexual nonsense. reverted. seen on November 17, 2006 18:12 EST. .--User:tingalex

[edit] considering how popular

considering how popular this topic is its funny how stubbed it is here, maybe we just rather ignore death til it comes a knocking. but come it will. --Halaqah 21:06, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Need Death (legal)

Or it could be put in this article. There are at least two ways to determine death, scientifically and legally, and they aren't always the same. Plus, the legal determination of death has some interesting history.Mneumisi 23:00, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Expand?

Does this article still require the request for expansion? I think it pretty much covers the subject, no? --Nathanael Bar-Aur L. 01:49, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Evolution and death

Strange that the evolutionary purpose of death is not mentioned - to get us out of the way for the next generation. Imagine a species surviving where the older, obsolete organisms competed for resources with their offspring! Though there may be other causes for death, this cause should be detailed in some reasonable depth, including studies on how lifespan is affected by environment - like predators and lack of (I believe shorter and longer lifespans are the result in almost all cases). Death's role in natural selection is also important, as well as extinction. Richard001 06:48, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How organisms respond to death

Another area that could be dealt with here is how organisms respond to death - for example some animals go away to die, some will attack sick animals causing them to die etc. Besides the onset of death, there is also the subject of what happens to a dead organism. Their decomposition etc could be mentioned, as well as how other organisms deal with a dead one - for example disposing of it somehow (e.g. ants carrying away dead ants), avoiding it from fear of catching a disease, consuming it (e.g. scavengers) and so on.

Carnivorous behavior could also be mentioned as a cause of death, something we humans tend to forget about. Avoiding carnivores is a part of life for most organisms out there. Looking at the article from a less anthropocentric perspective reveals a surprising amount of material that is essential to the topic of death. Richard001 07:02, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Death in non-human species

There has been a (so far empty) section created for death in non-human animals. I'd personally prefer the article to deal with death as a biological concept not focussed on any particular animal, including humans (I believe the picture of the hawk at the top sets a neutral tone early on by using an animal's death as the subject). Tucking non-human death into a small section of its own tends to make all other material focussed entirely on anthropogenic death, though the two areas overlap a lot and some material will have to be treated again in a non-human section. I'd like to hear from other editors on how they feel non-human death should be treated. Richard001 08:05, 9 December 2006 (UTC)