More Study Of NDE's

Education September 02, 2002

Science

Dead yet alive? by Sanjida O'Connell If patients are conscious while clinically dead, they should be able to describe what happened as they were resuscitated One night in June 1976, Heather Sloan was pronounced clinically dead. As her spirit left her body, she recalls that she looked down at herself lying on the hospital bed until a being of light encouraged her to float through a glowing tunnel. Sloan, who had an ectopic pregnancy, was resuscitated and, by the following morning, was able to describe what has now become known as a “near-death experience”.

This was far from an isolated event: scientists have discovered that 10 per cent of people brought back to life apparently have similar experiences. Their research is shedding light on what happens to the human body during death, and could help us to understand the phenomenon of consciousness.

About five years ago, Dr Sam Parnia began a scientific investigation into near-death experiences. “Initially I was quite sceptical, but I have had hundreds of case studies sent to me, which have convinced me that it is a real phenomenon,” says Parnia, a clinical research fellow in pulmonary and internal medicine at Southampton Hospital, who will present his results at a seminar on Saturday. “We started studying near-death experiences, using people who had suffered a cardiac arrest and reached the point of death.”

The criteria used by the medical establishment to define death are that the patient is not breathing, and has no heartbeat. Within ten seconds the brain ceases to function. This is the paradox of near-death experiences. “The view is that the brain produces the mind, so there should be no mind activity during a cardiac arrest since the brain is not functioning,” says Parnia. “If the mind is active, then there must be a separation between the mind and the brain.” This view is not embraced by the medical establishment.

Parnia chose to study patients who had suffered a cardiac arrest because, thanks to advances in medical technology, a fifth of these patients are resuscitated. His initial study was small: 63 patients who had been brought back to life, seven of whom reported a near-death experience. Major features include seeing a tunnel of light; deceased relatives; “heaven”; pure light; feeling an overwhelming sense of peace and calm; reviewing one’s life; and an out-of-body experience in which the patient looks down upon himself.

The problem for science is how to prove whether these experiences really occur. Three main theories exist: that the visions are a chemical by-product due to lack of oxygen; that they are a psychological response to the perceived threat of death; or that they are a spiritual event indicating that there really is an afterlife.

Parnia decided to investigate all three hypotheses. He looked at blood samples taken after the patients’ cardiac arrests, and the kind of drugs they were being given, and later interviewed the patients. The blood samples showed that they had higher oxygen levels than other patients and showed no sign of high levels of sodium and potassium, salts that are associated with delusions. All the patients were given standard resuscitation drugs, such as adrenaline, which do not contribute to hallucinations. “There is no evidence to back up the theory of chemical derangement,” concludes Parnia. Although all the patients had been born into the Christian faith, none was practising. Indeed, near-death experiences have been noted throughout the world and share similar characteristics regardless of culture and religion.

In addition, children as young as two who have had a near-death experience describe similar visions. “These children have not had time to have personal views on religion or to learn about the afterlife,” says Parnia. This evidence appears to rule out the second theory — that they are a psychological response to death.

But how is it possible to test whether near-death experiences are spiritual events? Parnia and his colleague, Dr Peter Fenwick, a consultant neurophysiologist at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, reason that if the patient really is having an out-of-body experience, this should be testable. First, a person floating above their body should be able to describe events that they can see while they are clinically dead that can be corroborated later. Secondly, the patient has a unique view of the hospital bed and could see objects that other people cannot. Parnia has placed cards on the top of wardrobes, or hanging from the ceiling, in cardiac wards — a pink dog, for instance. “These are not things the patient or the staff would associate with a hospital; they cannot see them and they do not know they are there,” he says.

So far this experiment has not worked because none of the cardiac patients he studied had an out-of-body experience, but Parnia and Fenwick are launching a nationwide study that will include 1,500 cardiac arrest survivors. The researchers predict that 150 will have a near-death experience, a quarter of whom will have an out-of-body experience.

“If we have someone who leaves their body, is able to identify the card we have left and report about events that happened in the resuscitation theatre which they could not have known about, then we would have to ask some serious questions about the science of consciousness,” Fenwick says. “And the older you get, the more interested you are in these questions.”

This is the subject that first brought me to USM

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