> Four years ago, I attended a medical ethics conference in Chicago,
>where there was a panel discussion on NDEs. One of the participants (I
>don't remember her name) shared information about a study that had been done
I really would like info on this study - do you have any way of fidning out
the name of the conference, who oversaw it, etc, so I might contact them?
>viability of NDE reports from those who claimed this experience. These
>hospitals had systematically placed a number of those round, colored plastic
>reflectors (the kind on the back of bicycles, for instance) on the tops of
>cabinets, curtain rails, reflecting mirrors, and the like, in locations
>where NDEs were likely to be reported -- emergency rooms, ORs, ICUs and
>CCUs. There were several reflectors placed in each room. Those patients
>who reported having an NDE were then extensively interviewed by those
>conducting the study. There was a good-sized sample (several hundred). The
>patients provided a set of highly uniform responses -- people said they felt
You're saying several hundred patients "died" and then returned to life??
It would take an extraordinary study of a very long length of time I would
think to get such numbers. People dying is one thing, but people who are
brain dead/flat-lined for up to 18 minutes and being wheeled off with faces
covered returning to life is quite another! And there are definite medical
records of such events, though they are rare. Then there are those who
flat-line but return to "life" relatively quickly and some do say they
experience this similar thing. But to get a large sample size of NDE-ers
systematically seems very difficult!
Gary DeWeese writes:
>Carl Sagan offers an intriguing (and fun) explanation in _Broca's Brain_.
>He notes the following common aspects of NDEs: sense of floating, movement
>down a dark tunnel towards a brilliant light; some all-powerful figure
>dressed in white. Then he suggests that we have reports of people
>inmoments of terror who "see their whole life pass before their eyes." He
>asks what would be almost our earliest memories, and answers, our memory of
>floating in the womb, moving down the birth canal, and being delivered into
>the hands of the obstetrician.
And this is what is so fascinating. That is EXACTLY what it seems like. Now
I ask you - WHY? Why would we all dream or envision our BIRTHS as we die?
The second bit of amazement is that when we first gain vision, (whether
from being blind, or from fainting, etc) we see "myriad colors" and bright
light. But why should we see this when our EYES are CLOSED and we are
flat-lining or dead? (or dead to the doctors in the operating room). Is
death not a passage to the afterlife? Those of us who are Chrsitian believe
so, obviously. And it seems so much like it falls together if when we die
we are "born" to our new life - in a similar way the fetus is born to a new
life on earth vs. the womb.
Wendee
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Wendee Holtcamp -- GREENDESIGN Communications
Environment/Nature/Adventure-Travel Writing
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