Human DNA and RNA Remain Active for Up to Twelve Hours After "Death"

Scientific studies have also found that human genes involved in making the heart beat and in healing wounds were active for up to 12 hours after death from trauma, heart attack, or suffocation.

This fact suggests that most organs for transplant are harvested while their donors are on some level still alive. It also suggests that organs most organs for transplant have to be harvested while their donors are on some level still alive. And this fact may explain why so many recipients of liver transplants develop cancer.

There are hundreds of genes that "wake up" after we stop breathing for the last time. Most of these genes were active when we a fetus inside our mother's womb. Some of these genes are associated with cancer. For many years, researchers assumed that the reason so many transplant recipients get cancer has something to do with the immunosuppressant drugs they take to prevent rejection of the transplanted organ. At least in the case of transplanted livers, it may have more to do with the transplanted organ itself. Genes in liver cells that had been "turned off" before birth are "turned on" during death, and attempt to recreate new life in the recipient, unfortunately in the form of cancer.

What are the implications of these findings? Does this mean that transplantation is a form of vivisection? Is it unethical to take organs out of a human body before all of its genes are quiet?

The discovery of gene activity after clinical death has not led to any widespread call for a moratorium on transplants. Doctors are confident that the act of harvesting organs for transplant does not result in pain to the donor. And unlike an earlier era in which people occasionally actually did arise from their coffins, or scratch and claw to get out, in modern medical care everything that can be done to extend life has been done before the donor is declared clinically dead.

For organ donors, donation is the only way that any part of them can continue live on physically after their brain has died. In another human being, the organ continues life and function. Left in the body, it only decays.

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Even while some genes are "turned on," carbon dioxide quickly builds up in the silent bloodstream. The absence of oxygen causes cells to burst open, releasing enzymes that digest not only them but their intact cellular neighbors. While human cells die, bacteria cells are very much alive. They quickly multiply to consume the dead tissue, starting just minutes after death.

In about half an hour, the force of gravity causes blood to collect at the lowest point of the body. The rest of the body turns pale. Without the ability to make energy to pump calcium ions out of their cells and into the bloodstream, muscle cells stiffen to cause rigor mortis. 

In about three days, probiotic and other bacteria in the gut cause an incredible stench as they break down proteins into sulfurous gases. In about two weeks, without embalming or refrigeration, these gases bloat the body so that it pops, something like a balloon. Within a year, without funeral preparation, in most climates, nothing is left but bone.

The only alternative to this process is continuing life through transplant. The line between life and death has been made fuzzier to make the acquisition of transplantable organs easier, but in most cases there was no possibility of a return to normal life.