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the organ, they can protiferate to reproduce themsel-ves, they can sometimes hypertrophy, or they can die. Complex organisms need a physiologic mode for cell death, so as to keep constant their number of committed to an apoptotic pathway may be rescued by therapeutic maneuvers 13. Thus, apoptotic offers the opportunity for a therapeutic intervention and this explains the attempts to discriminate betweencells and eliminate those damaged or that are no lon-ger necessary. Although the concept of physiologic cell death is quite old, renewed interest in the sub-ject dates to the creation of the term apoptotic and the description of its morphological characteristics by Kerr and colleagues in 1972 5. The functional concept of programmed cell death implies an active participation of the cell in its own Correspondencia: Eric C. Neilson, MD. necrosis and apoptosis as a mode of cell death in re-nal disease. Necrosis, as a mode of cell death, is a passive process in which the cell swells, loses the in-tegrity of the cell membrane, releases toxic and proinflammatoy products, and the DNA is degraded in random manner. Both apoptosis and necrosis, however, can occur at the same time in the same tis-sue 14. The occurrence of either may depend on the intensity of the precipitating events. For example, tis-sue ischemia may kill cells by either necrosis or apoptosis 14. The proportion of cells dying by eachApoptotic cell death i