X-Message-Number: 17069
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:43:11 -0400
From: James Swayze <>
Subject: NDE study not scientific
References: <>
Alas, NDE's again, ok here's my sophisticated and scientific response...BALONEY!
Well it's about as scientific as this study. See below, I'll point it out.
> Message #16953
> From: "Nord" <>
> Subject: Mind Continues
> Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 03:15:44 +0200
>
> Friday June 29 10:07 AM ET
> Scientist Says Mind Continues After Brain Dies
> By Sarah Tippit
> LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A British scientist studying heart attack patients
says he is finding evidence that suggests that consciousness may continue after
the brain has stopped functioning and a patient is clinically dead.
> The research, presented to scientists last week at the California Institute of
Technology (Caltech), resurrects the debate over whether there is life after
death and whether there is such a thing as the human soul.
Energy alone without matter to conform it cannot hold information. Yes a radio
signal holds information but it was modulated by a device made of matter and
must be demodulated by same. I'll wager anything there are no *energy only*
beings anywhere in existence. If someone has a reasoned case for such that does
not violate the laws of physics I'd love to hear it.
> ``The studies are very significant in that we have a group of people with no
brain function ... who have well-structured, lucid thought processes with
reasoning and memory formation at a time when their brains are shown not to
function,
Wrong, pure confabulation. I know, I've experienced heart stoppage. The NDE I
experienced was formulated well after the event. My immediate thoughts after
being informed I had been coded were that death must be nothingness because I
couldn't remember a damned thing about it. I knew there was time loss. I
remember the cause of the code clearly right up to when it occurred. A nurse was
catheterizing my lungs to remove
infected sputum caused by the double pneumonia that set in just after my neck
got broken. I remember clearly the candy stripper helping who was supposed to
place the breathing mask over my nose and mouth after each suction so to
replenish the oxygen that had been taken away from my lungs.
I remember how the nurse placed her thumb over a hole in the side of the
catheter that had a constant vacuum pressure. This vacuum would then suck from
down in my lung when the hole on the side was covered. This is how vivid my
memory of this is including how I hated the thing being run up my nose and then
having to swallow it into my lungs. The candy stripper forgot to replace the
breathing mask after a suction, the two
got their rhythm out of sync, and all the oxygen was pulled from my lungs and
wham my heart stopped! No tunnel, no lights, no friendly beings, no crappola!
> Sam Parnia, one of two doctors from Southampton General Hospital in England
who have been studying so-called near-death experiences (NDEs), told Reuters in
an interview.
> ``We need to do much larger-scale studies,
Yeah wouldn't he love to get the grants for that waste of effort.
> but the possibility is certainly there to suggest that consciousness, or the
soul, keeps thinking and reasoning even if a person s heart has stopped, he is
not breathing and his brain activity is nil, Parnia said.
> He said he and colleagues conducted an initial yearlong study, the results of
which appeared in the February issue of the journal Resuscitation. The study was
so promising the doctors formed a foundation to fund further research and
continue collecting data.
> During the initial study, Parnia said, 63 heart attack patients who were
deemed clinically dead but were later revived were interviewed within a week of
their experiences.
Within a week?! Whoa, how scientific! Man did anyone consider how much
confabulation and outside influence could occur in a week? Simply incredible!
> Of those, 56 said they had no recollection of the time they were unconscious
and seven reported having memories. Of those, four were labeled NDEs in that
they reported lucid memories of thinking, reasoning, moving about and
communicating with others after doctors determined their brains were not
functioning.
Hopelessly subjective. There is no way at this time to know what is or is not
happening in the mind of an individual during this time. However, Occum's Razor
would suggest the simplest answer owing to the lack of electrical activity would
be ummm, NOTHING.
> FEELINGS OF PEACE
> Among other things, the patients reported remembering feelings of peace, joy
and harmony. For some, time sped up, senses heightened and they lost awareness
of their bodies.
Yeah endorphins are real powerful. You can get really high on them.
> The patients also reported seeing a bright light, entering another realm and
communicating with dead relatives. One, who called himself a lapsed Catholic and
Pagan, reported a close encounter with a mystical being.
I would suggest this individual is preoccupied with guilt produced by religious
programming and has issues that came to fore due to preconceived expectations.
> Near-death experiences have been reported for centuries but in Parnia s study
none of the patients were found to have received low oxygen levels, which some
skeptics believe may contribute to the phenomenon.
Baloney! No oxygen deprivation from a heart stoppage? No blood to brain then no
oxygen to brain, pretty simple. I can't believe this was taken seriously.
> When the brain is deprived of oxygen people become totally confused, thrash
around
Yes, but only if the deprivation is occurring slowly. If it happens suddenly
there is no thrashing, there is no ability to thrash, you simply go out like a
light bulb, instantly.
> and usually have no memories at all, Parnia said.
I've experienced oxygen deprived unconsciousness from blacking out from too many
G-forces while doing aerobatic maneuvers...no memory loss. I've experienced
unconsciousness from oxygen deprivation while stupidly hyperventilating as a
means to explore the high felt as a pre-teen and I still remember it all
vividly, at least the immediately prior to and immediately after the
unconsciousness states. Here again no memory
loss for the periods before and after the unconsciousness. This Parnia is a
fool, is no scientist and is probably trying to fit his science in to a
preconceived agenda.
> ``Here you have a severe insult to the brain but perfect memory.
What severe insult to the brain?
> Skeptics have also suggested that patients memories occurred in the moments
they were leaving or returning to consciousness.
They are correct.
> But Parnia said when a brain is traumatized by a seizure or car wreck a
patient generally does not remember moments just before or after losing
consciousness. Rather, there is usually a memory lapse of hours or days. Talk
to them. They ll tell you something like: I just remember seeing the car and
the next thing I knew I was in the hospital, he said.
> ``With cardiac arrest, the insult to the brain is so severe it stops the brain
completely. Therefore, I would expect profound memory loss before and after the
incident, he added.
Wrong. In the above mentioned car wrecks and so forth as I understand it from
seeing this very thing on a recent forensics related show on the learning
channel a shock or blow to the head scrambles ones memory. The same thing is not
happening here. I found the following:
Concussion is a temporary disturbance of brain function
caused by a sudden blow to the head. A concussion
typically
results in a temporary loss of consciousness, followed
by a memory
loss for the events just before and after the injury.
More extensive
memory loss occurs if the injury is severe. A mild
concussion may
or may not involve unconsciousness and memory loss. It
causes a
momentary state of confusion.
In a concussion, the blow causes the brain to bounce
against the
inside of the skull, injuring the brain's outer
surface. Injury to the
inner parts of the brain may also occur.
There is obviously no concussion to the brain in a heart stoppage. There is no
trauma to the brain. There is a sudden lack of oxygen.
> Since the initial experiment, Parnia and his colleagues have found more than
3,500 people with lucid memories that apparently occurred at times they were
thought to be clinically dead. Many of the patients, he said, were reluctant to
share their experiences fearing they would be thought crazy.
How many of them, the typical floaters--hovering above their bodies, can
accurately describe things they couldn't possibly otherwise see unless they
truly were out of body and seeing them from an above perspective? Was this
scientific control used or is this as I suspect all anecdotal? Right now I can
convince myself that I am out of my body and looking down on myself. It's called
spatial perception and I am particularly
good at it. Most of us can close our eyes and imagine our surroundings from a
different perspective than the current one we occupy. I submit this is part of
how confabulation occurs.
> A TODDLER S TALE
> One patient was 2-1/2 years old when he had a seizure and his heart stopped.
His parents contacted Parnia after the boy drew a picture of himself as if out
of his body looking down at himself. It was drawn like there was a balloon
stuck to him. When they asked what the balloon was he said, When you die you
see a bright light and you are connected to a cord.
Well of course a perfectly reasonable way for a toddler to explain his
experience of the endorphin high. I think it is reasonable to assume he had
limited understanding of death but certainly some instinct regarding the
consequence of death. How young I wonder must a human being be to be completely
without any instinctual fear of death?
<snip>
> The brain function these patients were found to have while unconscious is
commonly believed to be incapable of sustaining lucid thought processes or
allowing lasting memories to form, Parnia said -- pointing to the fact that
nobody fully grasps how the brain generates thoughts.
Certainly not how his does at least.
> The brain itself is made up of cells, like all the body s organs, and is not
really capable of producing the subjective phenomenon of thought that people
have, he said.
Huh? Above he says we don't know how thought is produced but here he can
confidently say the brain can't produce thought?.
> He speculated that human consciousness may work independently of the brain,
using the gray matter as a mechanism to manifest the thoughts, just as a
television set translates waves in the air into picture and sound.
If independent from, then why bother with a body at all? I'd love to be a spirit
being and fly wherever I wanted, float through solid objects...man that all
sounds fun to me. But seriously all this stuff about souls living in bodies
until moving on to some higher plain, well why bother? Better yet why should
bodies have souls? What's the evolutionary purpose of a soul?
> ``When you damage the brain or lose some of the aspects of mind or
personality, that doesn t necessarily mean the mind is being produced by the
brain. All it shows is that the apparatus is damaged, Parnia said, adding that
further research might reveal the existence of a soul.
So then the soul should be independent of any brain damage. So why do perfectly
good people become nasty and bad after some brain injuries?
> ``When these people are having experiences they say, I had this intense pain
in my chest and suddenly I was drifting in the corner of my room and I was so
happy, so comfortable.
Brain drugs as I understand at least ten times as powerful as heroin I would
think would tend to make one feel real good!
> I looked down and realized I was seeing my body and doctors all around me
trying to save me and I didn t want to go back.
Then why did they go back? If the soul is in control of the gray matter as
mentioned above and did not want to return then why should the soul have
returned? It makes no sense.
<snip>
The bottom line is this study is a great big load of male bovine excrement.
James
--
From the point of ignition
To the final drive
The point of the journey
is not to arrive --RUSH
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