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THERE might indeed be life after death, as a policeman in Osaka was shocked to discover. The officer, summoned to a hospital to assist with a post-mortem investigation, was horrified to find the deceased still breathing and moving in the mortuary, 20 minutes after he’d been pronounced dead from a heart attack.

The modern-day Lazarus died four days later, still unconscious. But these life-after-death cases might be more common than anyone realises, say Hitoshi Maeda and a team from Osaka City University Medical School who cover the case in an upcoming paper in the journal Forensic Science International.

There have…

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