Report suggests consciousness can last ‘hours’ after death

(LifeSiteNews) — A researcher’s finding that consciousness may continue long after a person is normally considered dead may cause the medical profession to reconsider current norms concerning how long life-reviving efforts should continue and when organ harvesting to save the lives of others can humanely — if ever — begin. 

Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference in Phoenix, researcher Anna Fowler said that “emerging evidence suggests that biological and neural functions do not cease abruptly.”

“Instead, they decline from minutes to hours, suggesting that death unfolds as a process rather than an instantaneous event,” Fowler noted. “Elements of consciousness may briefly exist beyond the measurable activity of the brain and death, long considered absolute, is instead a negotiable condition.”

‘Death, once believed to be a final and immediate boundary, reveals itself instead as a process — a shifting landscape where consciousness, biology and meaning persist longer than we once imagined,” she said.

“Consciousness may not vanish the moment the brain falls silent. Cells may not die the moment the heart stops. This research proposes that death is not the sudden extinguishing of life, but the beginning of a transformation, one that medicine, philosophy and ethics must now approach with deeper humility and renewed clarity,” Fowler said.

If determined to be true or even likely to be true, Fowler’s findings have huge implications for current standard practices regarding resuscitation and the removal of organs from persons who may be pronounced “dead” prematurely.  

“After death,” Fowler said, “they’ve got to procure those organs right away so that they can save the life of another person. But there have been studies that have shown that up to 90 minutes after the declaration of death that those neural firings are still going off in the brain.”

Fowler concluded that “Understanding the biological timing of death can help ensure these decisions are made with scientific accuracy and ethical clarity.”

‘Horrifying’

Dr. Sam Parnia, director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone School of Medicine in New York, spoke of similar findings in 2023. 

“By showing that the brain is able to respond and to show signs of normal electrical activity, even up to an hour after resuscitation, we were able to demonstrate for the first time that the belief that a lot of doctors have that the brain dies after five or 10 minutes of oxygen deprivation is incorrect, and the brain remains quite robust,” Parnia said.

Parnia has said that it is likely the last thing many people hear as they lay dying in a hospital is medical staff declaring their “time of death.”

“Our findings show that hospitals allowed the organ procurement process to begin when patients showed signs of life, and this is horrifying,” Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared in July. “The organ procurement organizations that coordinate access to transplants will be held accountable. The entire system must be fixed to ensure that every potential donor’s life is treated with the sanctity it deserves.”

HHS’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) examined 351 cases where organ donation was authorized but ultimately not completed. It found:

• 103 cases (29.3%) showed concerning features, including 73 patients with neurological signs incompatible with organ donation.
• At least 28 patients may not have been deceased at the time organ procurement was initiated — raising serious ethical and legal questions.
• Evidence pointed to poor neurologic assessments, lack of coordination with medical teams, questionable consent practices, and misclassification of causes of death, particularly in overdose cases.