Woman wrongly pronounced dead dies from hypothermia in morgue

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Woman wrongly pronounced dead dies from hypothermia in morgue

Basit Mahmood
Sunday 13 Jan 2019 

A 62-year-old woman ‘came back from the dead’ in a morgue and was rushed to intensive care – only to die again several hours later from hypothermia.

The grandmother had been drinking with relatives at a party in Vasilyevka, Russia, when she appeared to have passed away.

A policeman then certified her as dead and took her ‘body’ in a hearse to the morgue.

However, the woman was still alive – and started moving while a morgue worker tried to fit a tag to the foot of her ‘corpse’.

These types of story crop up quite regularly, and it usually raises a question over the term "wrongly pronounced dead".

The question is this: is it simply assumed that death is not reversible, and that any evidence to the contrary must by definition be declared to be an error?

Having said that, the cases vary in terms of who made the determination of death, (a policeman) and after what sort of examination. But even so, there are cases where several qualified and experienced medical personnel have been involved in making such evaluation, but the person still came back to life.

My own view, not on this case in particular, but more generally, that we can't describe all such cases as simply 'errors'. It's time to recognise that death is sometimes reversible, in limited circumstances and for a limited time.

Wonder if she was told: “it’s not your time... come back in a few hours.”