What comes to mind when you think of death? At what point will you say a human being is dead. Right off the bat, I'd expect you to say that death is when the heart of the human stops beating and pumping blood through the body. If you did say that, then you aren't wrong but some scientists might object to the entirety of that definition. These days, the term "brain dead" has become more common in clinical settings. Being brain dead simply means the absence of cerebral activity. Neurological examinations, like pupillary reflex examination, have to be performed to ascertain that the patient is indeed brain dead. At this point, the patient is gone beyond redemption, though their heart can be kept active by artificial means. As such, we may expand on the definition of death to encompass the components of brain death. A patient in brain death usually still have viable organs, which can serve in transplantation. While these patients are gone, their organs may be used to give other patients a fighting chance at survival.
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