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The cellular processes involved in the death of the cell are of vital importance to biology and medicine: in biology because they occur as a normal part of the economy of every organism even during development and, of course, in its ultimate demise, and in medicine because cell death forms an important part of virtually every disease. We have been studying the events associated with cellular death for over 20 years and, in this chapter, will briefly review not only the knowledge that we have gained but also correlate it with data obtained from other laboratories. In addition, we will review our current working hypothesis concerning ion redistribution, particularly calcium, and their effects which lead to cell death. We regard cell death as an irreversible reaction to an injury. An injury is defined as any perturbation that alters the'normal'homoeostasis of cells. The severity of injurious agents ranges from those that kill the cell …