http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52232-2001Dec16.html
The Washington Post
Near Proof for Near-Death?
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 17, 2001; Page A11
The 44-year-old man who had collapsed in a meadow was brought to a
hospital, unconscious and with no pulse or brain activity. Doctors
began artificial respiration, heart massage and defibrillation.
A nurse trying to feed a tube down the man's throat saw that he was
wearing dentures. The nurse removed them and placed them on a stand
called a "crash car." The patient was moved to the intensive care
unit.
A week later, after the patient had recovered, the nurse saw the man
again. The man immediately recognized the nurse as the person who
had removed his dentures and also remembered other details of what
had happened while he was in a deep coma. He said he had perceived
the events from above the hospital bed and watched doctors' efforts
to save his life.
This account would be standard fare in a supermarket tabloid, but
last week it was published in the Lancet, a British medical journal.
It is the latest in a long series of efforts to either document or
debunk the existence of "near-death" experiences, something that for
the most part has remained in the realm of the paranormal.
The new study, conducted in the Netherlands, is one of the first
so-called prospective scientific studies. Instead of interviewing
people who reported near-death experiences after the fact, the
researchers simply followed hundreds of patients who were
resuscitated after suffering clinical death as their hearts stopped.
The idea was that this approach might provide more accurate accounts
by documenting the experiences as they happened, rather than basing
them on recollections of the distant past.
About 18 percent of the patients in the study reported some
recollection of the period when they were clinically dead, and 8
percent to 12 percent reported going through "near-death"
experiences, such as seeing lights at the end of tunnels or
"crossing over" and speaking with dead relatives and friends.
The researchers say the evidence supports the validity of
"near-death" experiences and suggests that scientists should rethink
theories on one of the ultimate medical mysteries: the nature of
human consciousness.
Skeptics, however, maintain that the Dutch researchers had not
provided evidence to buttress any extraordinary claims; certainly
nothing as dramatic as proof that there is an afterlife.
Most neuroscientists believe that consciousness is a byproduct of
the physical brain, that mind arises from matter. But if near-death
experiences are really what those who experience them say they are,
does that mean that people can be conscious of events around them
even when they are physically unconscious, when their brains do not
show signs of electrical activity?
How can consciousness be independent of brain function?
"Compare it with a TV" program, said Pim van Lommel, a cardiologist
at the Hospital Rijnstate in the Netherlands and the lead
investigator of the research. "If you open the TV set you will not
find the program. The TV set is a receiver. When you turn off your
TV set, the program is still there but you can't see it. When you
put off your brain, your consciousness is there but you can't feel
it in your body."
The study, he said in a telephone interview, suggested that
researchers investigating consciousness "should not look in the
cells and molecules alone."
Although the Dutch scientist said the research did not address
whether there was such a thing as the soul or God or the afterlife,
many remained skeptical. In an accompanying article, Christopher
French, director of the Anomalistic Psychology Research unit at
Britain's Goldsmiths College, said that multiple questions
persisted.
"We have understandable and natural urges to believe we will survive
bodily death and we will be reunited with our departed loved ones,"
he said. "So anything that would support that idea -- reincarnation,
mediums, ghosts -- present evidence of the survival of the soul.
It's something that we would all desperately like to believe is
true."
French pointed out that some of those in the study who reported they
had near-death experiences said in follow-up interviews that they
had not had them, while a few who had said they had experienced
nothing later said they now remembered them. He said that this could
suggest that false memories were at play.
"I don't think the study suggests anything beyond the dying
process," agreed Paul Kurtz, a former professor of philosophy at the
State University of New York in Buffalo and the chairman for the
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the
Paranormal.
"The out-of-body experience and light and traveling down a tunnel
and meeting people on the other side -- in my view these are the
psychological states that people go through as they are dying," he
said.
Both pointed out that hearing is the last sense to shut down in the
dying brain and that victims such as the 44-year-old man may have
heard some of the events around them and subconsciously
reconstructed the events as visual.
The Dutch researchers tracked 344 patients who had been
resuscitated. They ranged in age from 26 to 92. Three-quarters were
men. Most were interviewed within five days of being resuscitated,
and the researchers followed up with interviews two and eight years
later to test the reliability of the patients' memories.
Patients' demographics, religious beliefs, psychological makeup and
medical treatment were also documented to see who was more likely to
report such experiences.
The researchers found that the experiences did not correlate with
any of the measured psychological, physiological or medical
parameters, which Lommel said meant the experiences were unrelated
to processes in the dying brain. Most patients had excellent recall
of the events, he added, which undermined the theory that the
memories were false.
Finally, the people who had such experiences reported marked changes
in their personalities, compared with those who had come near death
but not had the experiences. They seemed to lose fear of death, and
they became more compassionate, altruistic and loving.
Bruce Greyson, a professor of psychiatry at the University of
Virginia in Charlottesville who has also done research in the area,
said that science had neither good explanations nor good rebuttals
of the conclusions of the Dutch researchers.
In experiments underway, he said, tiny signs were placed on the
ceilings of hospital rooms, so that if people were genuinely having
out-of-body experiences and hovering over their beds, they would be
able to see the signs and provide "proof" of the phenomenon.
While it may take a long time for such experiments to uncover a
case, he and others said, because not all patients will be
resuscitated in that room and not all cardiac arrest cases result in
near-death experiences, it could provide evidence to buttress
patients' reports.
"Brain chemistry does not explain these phenomena," Greyson said. "I
don't know what the explanation is, but our current understanding of
brain chemistry falls short."
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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