Emedinews:Insights on Medicolegal issues:Human body dies in bits and pieces-The clinical death implies the failure of the body as an integrated system.

• After death the life continues in the separate tissues, which constitute the body. These only die after varying periods depending upon the ability of the tissue to function without blood supply.
• This is called molecular or cellular death. The nervous tissue dies rapidly and the vital centers die in about 5 minutes. The muscle live longer and they will constrict to direct electrical stimuli up to 3 hours. The corneal reflex and papillary reflex disappear at the time of death.
• The pupil reacts to the drugs like atropine that causes dilatation up to 1 hour. The cornea can be removed for transfused for up to 6 hours and blood can be transfused for up to 6 hours of death. Therefore, we die in bits and pieces.
• The legal definition of death depends upon the diagnosis of somatic death. The distinction between somatic and molecular death becomes important because in order to remove essential tissues and organs for transplantation there is a relatively short time for the biological properties of living matter to persist after somatic death. With somatic death, there is complete generalized anoxia of the tissue and consequently stoppage of metabolic process carried out by the tissue cells.
• The metabolic process of the ganglionic cells stops in minutes, which are most sensitive whereas that of connective tissue stops in hours, which are the least sensitive.
(Reference Dr. PC Dikshit Head (MAMC) MD LLB, Textbook of forensic medicine, Peepe Publisher)

(Contributed by Dr Sudhir Gupta)