Apparently this is what Sinead O’Connor died of, it’s just been announced. But how is a 56 year old just dying in any way natural in this day and age?
In: Biology
It’s a code word.
It means either they aren’t going to say publicly what the actual cause is, or they simply aren’t going to investigate what it was.
Often it just means they were probably suffering from some issue already, which was not public, or they just had a sudden death like a heart attack.
“Natural causes” is not a medical term. In this context it is likely to say that there was no evidence of suicide/drugs/etc… but that they do not want to disclose the cause of death (likely an illness) for the sake of the family’s privacy.
Usually it’s a euphemism for “this person had been sick for a long time, and we’re not going to perform an autopsy to figure out exactly what ailing bodily function finally failed first”
Usually you hear it more for people who die at an advanced age since nearly every system is limping along when you’re 95, but younger people who tortured their bodies with drugs and alcohol can end up in a similar “it’s all failing at once” state even if they’re currently clean.
It simply means that they died of a cause not resulting from an external source. No injury, not foreign substances, no environmental concerns. Something in their body just stopped working properly and they died as a result. In the case of a coroner’s report, the term can be somewhat subjective.
It’s the difference between “old” or “illness” as compared to “accident”, “violence” or “suicide”.
It usually means “the coroner/doctor did not bother to find out, he was 95 and had a plethora of small ailments so it just had to happen” or “the loved ones did not want to disclose why the person died, either because they don’t want people nosing around their dead relative or because the actual cause of the death carries some sort of stigma (AIDS, drug abuse…).
I can’t speak to this particular case, but it really isn’t that unusual for someone in their 50’s to suffer a natural end. There are things like brain aneurysms that can take out anyone at any time. There can be underlying heart conditions that are just ticking time bombs. There are conditions like cancer that can take someone down very quickly, even before a diagnosis is made. Remember, the general public doesn’t have an inherent right to know someone’s medical history, so if the family doesn’t want to disclose the actual cause of death, they’ll just state natural causes. The police are free to investigate, and even force an autopsy, but that isn’t automatic, and the results wouldn’t necessarily be disclosed to the public.
I think of it like this
Imagine someone spend their entire teens, 20s and 30s being a heroin junky coal minor. But they are totally clean and working in an office by their mid 40s.
Then, at 56 they die, due to a build up of wear and tear caused by their unhealthy youth.
That would be natural causes to me. Because nothing specific caused it. It wasn’t OD, it wasn’t black lung or a cave collapse. It was natural causes.
Basically, anything that didnt involve an external party acting on them (ie a murder or suicide) and wasnt an accident like, say, a car crash. So, dying of natural cause might often mean that someone has been sick for a long time and eventually passed due to that illness. Or a heart attack is “natural causes”.
It’s a bit of a catch all category, basically it means they cannot pinpoint an acute cause of death and the deceased is old enough to have died a natural death. It’s also likely that the cause is known, but someone has decided not to announce the actual cause. But they want people to know it wasn’t foul play of any sort.
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