Returning from the dead is a pretty touchy subject. It's graced the pages of literature for as long as there has been the ability to write in language. For all we imagine about it no one has ever known how to actually do it. Until today at least.
As medical technology continues to advance doctors, engineers, biologists and programmers are learning more and more how to integrate technology into the human body. The deaf are able to hear, the blind are gaining or regaining their sight and people who once thought they would never be able to do simple tasks like pick up a pencil with a hand or walk on their legs are able to do so. As a result the inevitable question has been asked. Can technology bring us back from the dead?
Recently, a surgeon attempted to get funding for the first ever human head transplant. A procedure that would take the head off of a living body and graft onto a dead body granting the person a new lease on life. Some scientists are also experimenting with the idea that our consciousness can be stored in computers and effectively downloaded from or uploaded into a brain. It's not hard to see how both of these procedures could actually reverse death itself. The catch of course is that the brain must be 100% intact, if not then is the person that comes back really you?
You don't have to be a doctor to know that immediately upon death our bodies begin the decomposition process. This ultimately breaks our bodies down into chemical components that dissolve back into the soil and the circle of life and all that. But it's possible that if the brain can be preserved well enough then once the conditions that caused our death can be removed then it could be restarted. But what if it can't? What even at it's very earliest stages the decomposition process is able to advance enough that it fundamentally alters our brain chemistry in such a way that we are no longer us? At that point some serious ethical questions are raised about whether or not we should even bother.
You aren't the person you were when you were just five years younger. We alter and change ourselves everyday in every way. That doesn't man we died and were reborn (no matter what religion tries to tell you.) it simply means we changed. If technology advances such that we can come back albeit slightly different then how would we even know? To any of us it would be as if the death had never occurred. Slight changes are just that, slight and there's no reason at all to dismiss this idea that we can bring back someone from the dead just because their favorite color might change from red to blue. Its the big changes that scare the hell out of us.
Brain injuries are frightening because they damage the core of what makes us who we are. Everything we are, everything we will ever be is all stored in the fantastically complex and wonderful organ hidden underneath our skulls. The idea that it could be damaged in anyway is scary for very good reasons. There is literally a mountain of data that suggests brain injuries can and very often do fundamentally alter who we are. Atheists have become theists and vice versa. Multiple personalities can manifest each with it's own motivations and even political views. If there is damage to the brain in anyway then after a procedure that brings us back from the dead it could be entirely possible that who we become is not who we were. At that point a whole new question is raised.
Is coming back from the dead impossible no matter what happens to our physical bodies?
Until we try we will never know.