Are you alive?

© iStock | Balwan

What is a body? How do we know what death is? There’s an article in the Times this week about Yale researchers who injected “dead” pigs (no brain function, no respiration, no heartbeat) with a mystery chemical and they were “alive” again. Their proposed mission is to see if they can extend the body so that more organs of “dead” people are viable for transplant. But, it does beg the question of what the fuck do we know about anything? If we can’t even quantify death as an irreversible condition, then what is life?