Focus: End of life
Death and the researcher From philosophy to biology and materials research: far beyond the bounds of medicine, the human and natural sciences are engaging with the end of life. By Roland Fischer (rf) and Luzia Budmiger (lb). Illustration: Christoph Frei
What we lose with death For good reason, the death of loved ones makes us unhappy to the point of despair. But what about the prospect of our own death? It’s not always irrational for it to make us feel regret, says the philosopher Federico Lauria of the University of Geneva. In his research project ‘Death and powers’ he has developed his own approach to this thesis. His inspiration comes from the interdisciplinary ‘Immortality project’ currently running at the University of California. Death robs us of the ability to enjoy the benefits of life, says Lauria. This is why we have good reason to approach it with a sense of sadness. Lauria’s research aims at justifying our feeling of sadness when faced with the prospect of our own death. But it also offers us a perspective based on the other side of the argument: would it be irrational to wish ourselves immortal instead? lb
Rapid rot Our interaction with dying does not end at death. Human pathologists try to prevent the decay of the body for as long as possible, but Francis Schwarze, a tree pathologist at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA), is using his expert knowledge to accelerate the process of decay. Early on in his research career he was employed to give expert opinions on the state of trees in cities, especially with regard to fungal diseases. For a good ten years now he has been putting his knowledge to good use in a start-up company that has created a quite special fungal mixture. When applied to coffins, they pass over considerably quicker into the heavenly forests (and take their corpses with them). rf
Learning from cell death Our bodies dispose of billions of cells every day. In order for this process to function properly, the cells are inscribed with a kind of ‘suicide program’ that can be triggered by signals from either inside or out. This ‘apoptosis’ is found in both complex and simple organisms. The molecular, biological fundamentals are astonishingly similar in each case, says Michael Hengartner of the University of Zurich. In order to understand the process better in humans, his group is investigating apoptosis in the threadworm C. elegans. How exactly does a cell ‘notice’ that it is irrecoverably lost – perhaps because its DNA is damaged? And what signalling pathways lead to its death and elimination by its neighbouring cells? Medical researchers are also interested in the precise processes in these model organisms. They would like to boost apoptosis in cases of cancer, but inhibit it during a stroke. rf
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Swiss National Science Foundation – Swiss Academies: Horizons No. 112
Unequal to the grave Today, most of us die in old age. This makes us all the same before death: fragile. At least, that’s the common opinion. But this homogeneous image of death is being debunked by Marthe Nicolet, a sociologist at the Interfaculty Centre of Gerontology at the University of Geneva. Her work is benefitting from her current visit to the National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED) in Paris. Using obituary notices from Switzerland, she is investigating people’s environment at the end of their life – their families, economic situations and medical care. The words of thanks penned by the next of kin are especially revealing: our last phase of life is marked by inequalities. Nicolet’s doctoral thesis ‘Annoncer la mort’ (‘announcing death’) focuses our gaze not just on how we die, but on how we age. And she shows us the society in which we live today. lb