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Due to the social implications, an unambiguous determination of death is essential. In earlier times, this was relatively easy: a dead body was stiff, cold and pale. Once this state had been reached, it was empirically certain that it could not be reversed. As mentioned, tissue can be transplanted or propagated in cell culture after a death determined in this way. It can therefore be said that the archaic definition of death implicitly includes two main aspects that have been adopted by more modern definitions: 1) Death is defined as the point in the dying process at which it becomes empirically impossible for the individual to be revived, and 2) after the death of the individual, certain body tissues can be kept alive with the help of technology.
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