Afterlife report on Peter Jennings tonight

[AriesMoon]

Hi. I'm watching TV and they announced that on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings they will do a segment on the Afterlife. I didn't catch all of what they said but apparently they are going to show some kind of evidence that scientists have come up with. This might have to do with the Lancet publication that Steve has told us about?

It's on ABC at 6:30 Eastern Time if anyone wants to check it out.

[AriesMoon]

well, sorry but either I heard wrong about when this segment would be aired or it got bumped because of the headline story about the Bin Laden tape? If I hear more I will post about it.

Sorry.

[sgrenard]

Yes ..this was probably about the publication today in The Lancet medical journal of the NDE Studies conducted in the Netherlands. For information re: this see the thread in the Scientific Section.

Its been making its way about the air waves but getting bumped for "breaking news" in Afghanistan, OBL, the middle East and U.S. terrorist threats is becoming more commonplace these days.

[sgrenard]

And Ken, was it about the NDE study in Holland?

:)

[sgrenard]

Originally posted by KenC327
Yes, but unfortunately it was all too brief. As I understood it, it was a basic overview of findings that people had experiences of "sensation" after the cessation of brainwave activity and before resuscitation. Now, perhaps I missed something or misinterpreted it, but I didn't think that resuscitation was possible after "brain death." Perhaps you could clarify for us the physiological state these people were in when they had these experiences.

This depends on your definition of brain death and I don't believe there is a good one yet. Resuscitation is certainly possible even after prolonged brain death. This occurs when resuscitation (CPR) restores the heart beat and circulation but the victim remains in a permanent vegetative state or coma. In 30 years of resuscitating people, and I must have done so at least a thousand times, I have had cases where even after months of remaining in a vegetative state the victim recovered sufficiently to be functional.
Today, as a result of a thrust to harvest organs for transplant, a few standard tests, some done after only a few days of a person being comatose, are performed to declare a patient clinically dead.
One of these is the brain wave test or EEG, absence of pupil response to light and failure to resume spontaneous breathing when momentarily taken off a ventilator (apnea test) allowing the CO2 to rise to 60 mmHg which would stimulate functional respiratory centers in the brainstem if, indeed, they were functional. Failing all these tests results in a declaration of death and organs are then harvested.

Brainwave activity is not, however, a sole criteria for failure to revive and revive completely. The Pam Reynolds case is a prime example. For a surgical procedure she was cooled down so cold everything ceased. She didnt need oxygen or much oxygen for her tissues to survive and be resuscitated. There are cases of children, drowned in cold water and under for an hour or more, who were similarly protected and were successfully resusictated.


The question, then, in these cases is fine,brain wave activity has ceased during the resuscitation phase. When it is restored there is recall of events and images or visions of places the victim could not have possibly been aware of. If the brain wasn't functioning where did these recalled conversations and images come from? That's the big question. One obvious answer is that the mind and brain are not one and the same and if so, this simple bit of information provides unequivocal evidence of the mind (=consciousness) being able to survive death. Afterall, by all current standards, it seems to do so when "death" is merely temporary.