I had
the pleasure of reading Sam Parnia’s book titled Erasing Death in which he
covers the rising
science of resurrection therapy. As you
may be aware, I personally suffered a cardiac arrest, had high quality CPR
applied immediately and until my heart was restarted twenty minutes later. This all happened outside the hospital and
once in emergency, I was then quickly stented up to relieve a serious
blockage. The chances of surviving this
in 2005 was approaching zero. Now though
my body would have been quickly chilled and the developing protocol will
include this and automatic CPR machines.
For myself it was near run thing that worked out fine.
He has also
investigated what is presently described as NDE or Near Death Experience. What has arisen, thanks to these heroic
efforts, more and more are returning from the threshold of death with a remarkable
and consistent report however culturally colored.
What is clear
scientifically is that our consciousness
is able to separate from the body and to step back to await the outcome
while retaining the ability to observe and to have rational cognition. Every other attempt to explain runs into
serious issues and counter examples. Now
we are already aware of this by way of successful meditation as well which
drive out of body experiences. Thus this
is not news and plenty of testing has confirmed the separation aspect.
It also conforms
powerfully with the understanding that consciousness itself is separate from
our experiential space time manifold in which we reside. Thus I have a sound theoretical foundation
for all this to happen. Recall that
stepping outside of our physical present allows us to also step outside of
change itself.
What we learn is
interesting. The withdrawing soul finds
himself in a tunnel or passage way and an obvious sense of direction that he
then moves toward. He typically meets
relatives or a spirit being or both as he moves forward. He may see a fence or gate that he must not
go beyond as a point of no return.
Usually that is it for most.
However some also do get to start an immediate life review seen in terms
of the eyes of those affected by their actions and they judge their own guilt
and errors. This is a sensible way to
approach the issue.
Needless to say
all returnees have a serious attitude adjustment as a result. How could they not?
Erasing Death
Posted:
02/26/2013 4:14 pm
Director
of Resuscitation Research at Stony Brook University School of Medicine
What happens when we die? This is one of the
most enduring mysteries. While almost every person has their own opinion, most
would ultimately shrug and say, "We can't bring people back from the dead
to tell us, so we will never really know." But that is no longer true. Due
to a revolution in the field of modern resuscitation science, particularly over
the past decade, now we can. Today, by the lexicon of modern resuscitation
science, death is in fact fully reversible. Death can no longer be considered
an absolute moment but rather a process that can be reversed even many hours
after it has taken place. How many hours? Well, we don't know precisely, but
definitely long enough to say that many of the 1,514 lifeless bodies discovered
in the water by the crew of the rescue ship RMS Carpathia two hours after the
Titanic had sunk could have been brought back to life if the Titanic had sunk
in 2012 instead of 1912. This is not a play on words; it is literal. A person
can actually be brought back to life after the heart has stopped beating and
the brain has flatlined. The reason? The discovery that it is only after a
person actually dies that the cells in his body go through their own process of
death, which can be manipulated through science.
As a result of these
advances, we can now study what these people experience in that period after
their heart stops and before they are brought back to life, which includes
seeing a warm light, a beautiful compassionate being, or the sensation of
separating from the body and seeing doctors and nurses or family members
talking (an out-of-body experience). But rather than approaching this from a
religious or philosophical point of view, we can now approach it from a
scientific and medical perspective. This is what inspired me to writeErasing Death: The Science That Is
Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death -- to share what I
and other doctors are discovering in hospitals all over the world.
Because we have never had a science for studying death, we have never had an objective method to go beyond the threshold of death and study what happens both biologically and from a mental and cognitive perspective. In the past, everything that we have dealt with has basically been hearsay and people's own beliefs. But recent scientific advances have produced a seismic shift in our understanding of death. This has challenged our perceptions of death as being absolutely implacable and final. And so now many of our strongest-held views regarding death are outdated. In fact, where death is concerned, two major revolutions have already begun -- one of accomplishment, and another of understanding. In short, medical science is rendering previously unthinkable outcomes entirely plausible. We may soon be rescuing people from death's clutches many more hours -- or even longer -- after they have actually died.
In my work, I don't study people who are near
death. I study people who have objectively and medically died. Therefore, what
we've come to understand is that the experience that these people have of going
beyond the threshold of death, entering the period after death for the first
few tens of minutes or hours of time, can provide us with an indication of what
we're all likely to experience when we go through death.
Doctors and researchers in various fields are
forging this new path. They have developed equipment to deliver more effective
chest compressions to help restart people's hearts. Neurologists have started
to discover that contrary to the old dogma, supposedly vegetative patients may
actually be conscious and aware of their surroundings and can carry out mental
tasks on command. They are also are creating cold packs to enwrap heart-stopped
patients, machines to push chilled saline into their veins, injections to
preserve the cells of the body, and drips that deliver oxygen carefully draped
by a microscopic layer of fat to cells in the remotest parts of the body after
death.
Contrary to common perception, brain and other
cells in the body can live for many hours after a person dies. There are
different estimates on how long cells can survive without a blood supply and
oxygen after death: bone cells for four days, skin cells for 24 hours. Although
the oxygen and energy supply to brain cells is depleted within four to five
minutes, brain cells remain viable but non-functioning for up to eight hours.
Therefore, if cooling process and post-resuscitation care is done correctly,
the patient can come back to life without brain damage. Cooling and optimal
post-resuscitation care is one of the dividing points between those who suffer
brain damage after cardiac arrest and those who don't. If cooled, all those
cells that were deprived of oxygen can again return to normal. Brain death, the
other term commonly used to define death, is thus simply a state of
irreversible and irretrievable brain damage either after someone dies due to
circulatory arrest -- when the heart stops beating (which is how we have always
considered death) -- or due to some other process that causes brain damage
(while largely sparing the other organs) such as occurs with a massive head
injury.
Cooling is the most revolutionary advancement in
the last 10 years. It is a braking mechanism that slows brain cell
deterioration after death, preserving the body and saving the brain from
damage. It enables physicians to safely reverse the cellular processes that take
place after death. Although national and international medical bodies give the
highest recommendation for its use, only 50-60 percent of hospitals in the
U.S., Britain and Germany have been shown to have "cooling" systems
and fewer eligible patients actually receive it. In 2012, it has been estimated
that only around three to seven percent of eligible patients in the U.S.
received cooling therapy, which may contribute to unnecessary deaths and brain
damage and persistent vegetative state in survivors.
In June
2011, a 30-year-old female was found in a forest at 8:32 a.m. following an
overdose of medications. She was dead. Her body temperature had dropped from
37˚C (98.5˚F) to 20˚C (68˚F), meaning that she had been there for several
hours. The ambulance team arrived at 8:49 a.m., administered CPR and shocked
her heart using an automated external defibrillator, but she remained dead.
When the
woman arrived at the hospital at 9:22 a.m., her body temperature was still 20˚C
(68˚F), and her pupils were fixed and dilated and not reactive to light,
signifying that she remained dead. The emergency doctors performed CPR and
inserted a breathing tube and ventilated her lungs with an automatic
ventilator, all while continuing chest compressions. The drugs adrenaline, amiodarone,
and lidocaine were injected to restart the heart. Despite efforts to begin
warming her up, the woman's temperature remained unchanged. The doctors then
hooked her up to the ECMO machine to ensure optimal oxygen supply.
After six
hours of treatment, her temperature returned to 32˚C (89.5˚F), and her heart
restarted. Although she had remained physically dead for at least five to 10
hours overnight without any treatment, and then for a further six hours while
undergoing lifesaving treatment in the hospital, the woman was able to recover
and eventually walk out of the hospital without organ and brain damage three
weeks later. Because she had been naturally cooled down during the time that
her heart was stopped, her cells did not sustain permanent damage and were able
to return to functionality once oxygen delivery was restored. This is what is
commonly known as a Near Death Experience, though I now propose that such
experiences be termed After Death Experiences because the woman had, in fact,
died.
As an
unintended consequence of developing these new lifesaving measures, science is
also expanding our knowledge of death. By finding new means to save lives, we
are also inadvertently finding new ways to investigate and answer fundamental
questions about what happens to human consciousness, to what we might call the
mind, the "self," or even the "soul," during and after
death -- questions that, until recently, were considered subjects better suited
to theology, philosophy or maybe even science fiction.
In view
of the rapidly evolving progress in the field of resuscitation science and the
ever-expanding gray-zone period after death, I believe it is important to
include what we would refer to as human consciousness, psyche or soul in future
definitions and considerations regarding death. It would also perhaps be wise
to concentrate some of our future research efforts on understanding the state
of human consciousness after death has started, since the evidence currently
suggests that it is not lost immediately after death but continues to exist for
at least some time afterward.
While we
don't have all the answers, we do know that the once-held philosophical idea
that there is no way back after death is not accurate and that there is a
significant period of time after death in which death is fully reversible. The
goalposts have moved, and we don't know where the science will take us. But
exploring this in its totality opens up an unchartered frontier that affects us
all.
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