LIFE after DEATH?
The latest medical research is questioning if brain death really is the end of existence.
September 2002

Life after death could prove a reality, instead of merely a reassuring concept, if the first truly scientific research into the subject stands up to scrutiny. A study of more than 300 heart patients at the Rijnstate Hospital in Arnhem, Holland, and 10 other Dutch hospitals showed that more than a fifth of them saw or felt something vividly at a time they were technically dead.

And they did not all see the beautiful visions most commonly described by people during a period of heart failure. The most dramatic case was that of a man who literally saw a nurse removing his dentures while trying to resuscitate him - when he saw her again, he asked for them back!

Given that a parallel study in Britain involving 62 patients has recorded experience of consciousness - seeing, feeling or hearing - in patients known to be dead, doctors may now have to reconsider whether brain death really signifies. The new research suggests the brain is not, as scientists have hitherto believed, the organ responsible for conscious experience. Doctors involved in the study believe it may be something akin to what spiritual leaders call the "soul", although doctors recoil from using such a loaded term, describing it more as an electrical force that operates independently of the body.

CELESTIAL VISIONS

One in five patients studied by the researchers in Holland over a 10-year period admitted to what has always been described as a near-death experience (NDE), but in their case it was actually an in-death experience, since they were categorically not alive at the time they had their visions.

Between crashing after a heart operation and being brought back to life, the patience reported commonly experienced phenomena such as bright lights, tunnels bridging the present and future, and a profound feeling of peace and well-being. Half these visionaries were aware of being dead, but felt positive about it, and nearly a third saw a celestial landscape.

Significantly, from a scientific point of view, they were able to describe these experiences to the letter when asked about them again on three separate occasions over eight years.

"These results push to the limits medical ideas about the relationship between consciousness and memory," says Dr Pim van Lommel, a cardiologist at Rijnstate Hospital. Dr van Lommel initiated the study in 1988 because he was so sceptical of the dozens of patients who had reported having an NDE to him during treatment. Reports of NDEs have been coming in from patients for decades, but are invariably rubbished by doctors and scientists as a whole, given the impossibility of substantiating such stories after the fact, says Dr van Lommel.

These visions, explained away by sceptics as an extreme reaction to the stress of coming close to death, often includes a run-through of the persons entire life in fast rewind, and sometimes a glimpse of a dear departed waiting to escort them into the afterlife.

Patrick Tierney, a cargo manager for British Airways, had such an experience 10 years ago while doctors at Hillingdon Hospital in London were struggling to restart his heart after he went into cardiac arrest. "The next thing I knew, I was walking down a long dark corridor with wooden panels, like a medieval house," says Tierney, 51 at the time.

He emerged into a beautiful garden where his parents and mother-in-law, all of whom had died a few years previously, were waiting for him. "I went to go through the gate in the fence and my dad said, 'Whatever you do, don't go through that gate'... I found myself back in the dark tunnel, and the next thing I knew I could hear a woman calling my name - it was a nurse from the hospital."

VIVID MEMORIES

There was no such preselection in the Dutch and UK studies of patience by age, sex, or demographics, and no preconception on the part of the doctors as to what would be reported to them - if anything.

The patients, who had nothing more in common than that they died briefly from heart attacks before being brought back to life, were merely routinely interviewed to see what, if anything, they had to say about their periods of unconsciousness. Nearly a fifth of those in Holland reported an NDE, including the startling case of the 44-year-old who had his false teeth removed while a resuscitation team worked frantically for more than an hour and a half to restore his heart beat.

"Only after more than a week do I meet again with the patient, who is by now back in the cardiac ward," reads the logbook of the nurse who placed those false teeth on the cardiac-arrest cart. "The moment he sees me he says, 'You were there when I was brought into the hospital, and you took my dentures out of my mouth and put them on that card. It had all these bottles on it, and there was this sliding drawer underneath, and that's where you put my teeth.'.

"I was amazed he said this, because I remembered this happening while the man was in the process of CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation). It appeared he had seen himself lying in the bed and perceived the doctors and nurses from above. He was able to describe correctly and in detail the small room in which he had been resuscitated, as well as the appearance of those present."

The nurse admitted that the team was close to giving up on the patient who described his frustration at knowing they felt he had little hope of survival, and not being able to tell them he had no intention of drying. "The patient tells me that he desperately tried to make it clear to us that we should continue CPR," reported the nurse.

BODY AND SOUL

Dr van Lommel says there may be some truth to the religious notion of a soul existing independently of the body. "It's always been assumed that memories, emotions and all forms of consciousness are the function of the brain," he says. "But if memories are created while the brain isn't functioning, it may be that the brain is actually a receive for consciousness - like a television set receives programs, even though you see nothing when you look inside the box."

Dr Peter Fenwich, co-author of the British study, is even more bullish. "The mind/bran split has now got to be a real possibility," says the respected neuropsychiatrist who runs the epilepsy unit at Oxford's Radcliffe Infirmary.

Although only eight per cent of the patients his team surveyed reported an NDE, Dr Fenwich believes their experiences are highly significant, and could not have happened at anytime other than while they were in a state of cardiac arrest.

"It doesn't happen when they regain consciousness, because that is when they are confused," he insists. "And, clearly, these visions are not invented. They are firmly entrenched in the patients' memory circuits and described by them as the truest experiences they have had. The scientific materialism viewpoint no longer holds good - we have tons of evidence now that the mind works outside the skull."

However, sneak previews of an afterlife have caused great pain to most who have experienced them, according to Dr van Lommel. "When we reinterviewed the subjects eight years later, we found that 80 per cent of those who reported an NDE were now divorced - because their partners didn't believe them.

"Nevertheless, the overriding effect of what they went through was positive. They reported they had become more empathetic, less concerned about money or their job, and had lost their fear of death."

The Dutch team is now hoping for funding to study OBEs - out of body experiences - such as that experienced by the man with the false teeth - more closely. It would be impossible for sceptics to argue with people who could describe targets hidden out of sight, which they could see only if they had, in fact flouted out of their bodies and had looked down on themselves receiving the ministrations of a resuscitation team.