 Those in the second animalist camp deny that being alive is a necessary condition for the persistence of human animals. On their view, a human animal (like all organisms) is a functionally organized physical object whose membership in a particular species is attributed to its origin and structure. Only if it is so gruesome as to destroy this structure will an organism’s death bring about its nonexistence. We persist, David Mackie puts it, “as long as this organisation of [our] constituent parts remains sufficiently nearly intact” (1999b: 237).