Death is not final, it can be reversed claims New York University doctor

Death has always been considered as the pause, culmination and cessation of continuous life. However, for , associate professor of medicine at ’s Langone Medical Center, death is not the final; it can be reversed.

“What we believe about death is fundamentally wrong”. It is not the end, he says, but a “reversible state”," he told The Telegraph in an interview.

"Our brains remain "salvageable for not only hours, but possibly days" after death"

After studying for several years, Parnia suggests that the brain remains "salvageable for not only hours, but possibly days" after death. In one of his studies he found that some cardiac arrest patients had memories of their death experiences up to an hour after their hearts had stopped, and brain activity from those same patients suggests a similar phenomenon.

"If we remove that social label that makes us think everything stops, and look at it objectively, [death is] basically an injury process," he told the media.

What happens when one dies?

In another interview with the University of Chicago, Parnia says, "There is this perception that if you ask the question of what happens to consciousness after death, you’re talking about something philosophy or theology and so on. And people have created these artificial borders where they say, “Well, this is not science.” Of course, it’s science."

"Like it or not, science has moved into the post-mortem period. Science has moved into what people used to think was philosophy, what happens after death," he says.

"Science has shown that actually even after a person dies, that actually the cells inside of the body do not suddenly decompose or degrade and that there is a fairly long period of time in which even the brain can be preserved even after people have died," he explains.

"A major contributor to brain damage is the impact of secondary injuries following the restoration of blood flow and oxygen to the brain, which can be seen to start even after a few minutes of oxygen deprivation. Thus, from a scientific perspective, death remains potentially reversible for as long as the underlying cellular processes have not reached biological irreversibility, possibly hours to days into the postmortem period," he says in one of his research papers.

How can death be reversed?

According to Parnia, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machines and a special combination of drugs can help in the revival process, as is evident in animal studies. He also revealed to the media that his team prescribes the CPR cocktails to cardiac arrest patients in order to help them revive. The CPR cocktail comprises epinephrine, the diabetes drug metformin, vitamin C, the antidiuretic drug vasopressin, and the supplement Sulbutiamine.





Discover what drives your weight management journey. Take the survey Now.