Although sin is the ultimate cause of suffering and death, it is not necessarily caused by the sin of the suffering person. For Christians there exists a tension between the affirmation of life and the acceptance of death. Suffering and death are obstacles to living this life to the fullest but cannot be considered absolute evils. The inevitability of death must be kept before us. Death Third point is significant because . . .
Individuals can recover from a coma.
Possible because the essential structures of the human organism remain intact. This does not mean that all cells or even organs must have ceased functioning completely. These functions are not those of the human organism as a unified entity, but merely a residual life at a level of organization comparable to that of plants and animals. Thus the essential point about determining human death is not to decide whether any life is present, but whether human life in the sense of a unified human person is still present. Today the answer is more complicated because of two developments.