Lazarus Effect

Sam Parnia

"How many minutes can you now survive after cardiac arrest? What do new medical techniques teach us about consciousness? How will these change our views of who we are? In 2012, two football stars collapsed while playing. Both were technically dead yet, while Fabrice Muamba received hypothermia treatment and recovered, his counterpart in another country did not. In "The Lazarus Effect", Dr Sam Parnia, a critical care physician and one of the world's leading experts on the scientific study of death, uses fascinating stories, as well as the very latest research, to investigate what happens during cardiac arrest. He also explains how medical advances are revolutionising our chances of survival. Parnia shows how these developments have introduced a controversial 'grey zone' between heart failure and irreversible death, where death is not a single point but a process. What does that mean...