Medical innovation and technologic advances enrich daily living and occur within our normative worlds that are socially constructed. These advances confront society with critical questions about the nature of human life, laying bare the inadequacies of extant norms and boundaries. Yet, society has been unable to develop consensus about when life ends. Scientific studies highlight that life is best characterized by continua without natural boundaries. Thus, scientific information alone cannot be employed to justify the socially constructed health categories required for setting norms and boundaries. An iterative process that integrates a broad range of nonscientific data with advancing scientific information is needed to facilitate consensus for updating social norms and boundaries. This can lead to a new taxonomy of living across the measurable continuum of life and align our normative worlds with the dizzying pace of medical innovation and advances in technologies transforming the world in which we live.

医疗创新和技术进步丰富了日常生活，并发生在我们社会构建的规范世界中。这些进步使社会面临有关人类生活本质的关键问题，暴露了现有规范和界限的不足。然而，社会一直无法就生命何时结束达成共识。科学研究强调，生命的最佳特征是没有自然边界的连续体。因此，仅靠科学信息不能用来证明设定规范和界限所需的社会构建的健康类别的合理性。需要一个将广泛的非科学数据与先进的科学信息相结合的迭代过程，以促进就更新社会规范和边界达成共识。这可以在可测量的生命连续体中形成一种新的生活分类法，并使我们的规范世界与改变我们生活的世界的医疗创新和技术进步的令人眼花缭乱的步伐保持一致。