> Yet scientists have found it oddly hard to say exactly why sleep loss is lethal.

Barf. This kind of straw-manning is all too common in science journalism. IANAS but I know that normal metabolism generates free radicals (electron-greedy molecules), which then steal electrons from anything they touch, causing damage. If that damage isn't repaired regularly, then our basic metabolic pathways breakdown, and we die.

I'm sure there are mysteries to unpack beneath this, but why treat the reader to a moronic underrepresentation of the state of the art?