First hint of 'life after death' in biggest ever scientific study on subject

[Perspicuo]

First hint of 'life after death' in biggest ever scientific study
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...r-death-in-biggest-ever-scientific-study.html

Death is a depressingly inevitable consequence of life, but now scientists believe they may have found some light at the end of the tunnel.

The largest ever medical study into near-death and out-of-body experiences has discovered that some awareness may continue even after the brain has shut down completely.

It is a controversial subject which has, until recently, been treated with widespread scepticism.

But scientists at the University of Southampton have spent four years examining more than 2,000 people who suffered cardiac arrests at 15 hospitals in the UK, US and Austria.

And they found that nearly 40 per cent of people who survived described some kind of ‘awareness’ during the time when they were clinically dead before their hearts were restarted.

 

[barbos]

what a waste of money

 

[bilby]

The ability to answer questions is a pretty big hint that somebody as never actually died, no matter how 'near' they might have been thought to have come.

 

[Perspicuo]

Neither of you read the article.
You remained in the same state I was when I first read it, except I overcame it with less than 2 minutes of reading. It's not about woo, it's about credible reports of sentience.

I find the ramifications horrifying. I remember we all cried at my grandparents' deathbeds when the doctors said they had just passed away. I wouldn't like to hear a doctor say I passed away, people crying and saying goodbyes, put a linen sheet over my face and put me in a refrigerated room, etc, while still conscious. I find it terrifying. Some people report what seem very trippy scenarios, but a very large degree were aware of things going on around them.

People are going to have to change the way they treat the recently deceased -not as cadavers but as still sentient people.

 

[untermensche]

I've been doing my own studies with grass.

I wait for the grass to die and see if I can see something that survives death.

I figure if humans survive death, and humans are just a contingency of life like grass, grass should survive death too.

My findings are inconclusive.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I've been doing my own studies with grass.

I wait for the grass to die and see if I can see something that survives death.

I figure if humans survive death, and humans are just a contingency of life like grass, grass should survive death too.

My findings are inconclusive.

Well, I will give you $10 million of taxpayer money to continue this study.

Let me know how it goes.

 

[KeepTalking]

Neither of you read the article.
You remained in the same state I was when I first read it, except I overcame it with less than 2 minutes of reading. It's not about woo, it's about credible reports of sentience.

I find the ramifications horrifying. I remember we all cried at my grandparents' deathbeds when the doctors said they had just passed away. I wouldn't like to hear a doctor say I passed away, people crying and saying goodbyes, put a linen sheet over my face and put me in a refrigerated room, etc, while still conscious. I find it terrifying. Some people report what seem very trippy scenarios, but a very large degree were aware of things going on around them.

People are going to have to change the way they treat the recently deceased -not as cadavers but as still sentient people.

I read it. Their best evidence is that a guy who was dead from a heart attack heard the machine that goes 'beep' beep twice before he was resuscitated, and he was able to describe what efforts they took to revive him, because no one except medical professionals have knowledge of how a person can be revived after a heart attack.

Well, I'm convinced. /sarcasm

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It may mean we need to push the line of "death" back a bit more. There is no evidence to suggest that there is life after death.

“We know the brain can’t function when the heart has stopped beating,” said Dr Sam Parnia, a former research fellow at Southampton University, now at the State University of New York, who led the study.

I can say with certainty that if the guy could recall certain details that yes, the brain can function on some level passed a time that was originally thought to be the threshold. Of course, like all things, some people may be able to function just a little longer than others.

The editor put a "fantabulous" headline on a story that isn't exactly too impressive.

"Brain lasts maybe a minute or two longer in a bare minority of people - Study finds"

 

[Perspicuo]

Holy cow. Talk about bad reading comprehension, all of you.

The research means your brain knows what is going on after customary criteria of death are met.

It's like talking to religious believers. Back up. Read again. What is the research saying? Not the voices in your head, I mean the article.

---

Ok, let's try it another way: suppose the article is not talking about woo. What is it saying about people pronounced dead? I mean medically, physically, materially, neurologically.

The editor put a "fantabulous" headline on a story that isn't exactly too impressive.

"Brain lasts maybe a minute or two longer in a bare minority of people - Study finds"

At least somebody read the article. Not exactly passed your pet issues, but it's a beginning. Forget the headline. The research shows there is bodily life after people are pronounced dead.

 

[doubtingt]

Holy cow. Talk about bad reading comprehension, all of you.

The research means your brain knows what is going on after customary criteria of death are met.

It's like talking to religious believers. Back up. Read again. What is the research saying? Not the voices in your head, I mean the article.

---

Ok, let's try it another way: suppose the article is not talking about woo. What is it saying about people pronounced dead? I mean medically, physically, materially, neurologically.

The editor put a "fantabulous" headline on a story that isn't exactly too impressive.

"Brain lasts maybe a minute or two longer in a bare minority of people - Study finds"

At least somebody read the article. Not exactly passed your pet issues, but it's a beginning. Forget the headline. The research shows there is bodily life after people are pronounced dead.

To be fair, the article's title is written to intentionally mislead and not to convey the more accurate implication that clinical "death" criteria are inaccurate and some people are still alive and conscious when they meet those criteria. That is at most what the data suggest. Also, as Keep Talking pointed out, even that weak implication is not well supported by anything described in the article, and the idea that the patient claimed to hear beeps is very poor evidence that his experiences were after clinical death was declared. What we know based on much sounder science is that memories, especially during emotional trauma, are highly inaccurate reconstructions filled with errors of omission, commission, bias, and expectations.

Another annoying thing about the article is the notion that consciousness after clinical death was thought "impossible". On what basis was it assumed impossible? Not on a scientific one. Many practicing doctors might have thought that, but the scientific ignorance among practicing doctors is even more frightening as the thought of being conscious while people around you are reacting like you're dead.

 

[Underseer]

Next, we should waste taxpayer dollars and fund research to find out if hallucinogenic drugs prove that toasters can talk.

 

[Bomb#20]

suppose the article is not talking about woo. What is it saying about people pronounced dead? I mean medically, physically, materially, neurologically.

Bring out yer dead!
Here's one.
I'm not dead!
'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.
I don't want to go on the cart.
Oh, don't be such a baby.
I can't take him.
I think I'll go for a walk.
You're not fooling anyone, you know.

 

[dystopian]

Holy cow. Talk about bad reading comprehension, all of you.

The research means your brain knows what is going on after customary criteria of death are met.

It's like talking to religious believers. Back up. Read again. What is the research saying? Not the voices in your head, I mean the article.

Actually, the *article* is directly claiming that some awareness may continue after the brain has shut down completely; which is bullshit of the highest order. In order to prop up this position, the article quotes Dr.Sam Parnia, who says that the brain can't function when the heart has stopped beating... which simply isn't true. It's true that the brain needs the heart in order to function long-term... but it is NOT true that as soon as the heart stops beating that the brain stops functioning. He then goes on to claim that the brain 'typically shuts down' within 20 to 30 seconds after the heart stops beating, but again this simply isn't true unless you fudge the term "shuts down". To me, saying that "the brain has shut down" means "this person is braindead."; we've known for decades now that people can be revived from complete cardiac arrest for a period of up to 10 minutes if properly handled. Any such revived person was *not* braindead. What IS true is that it is medically accepted that *consciousness* is interrupted on average within 30 seconds after cardiac arrest... which is a far cry from 'the brain shuts down'.

The article (like pretty much every such article not meant for fellow scientists but rather the public at large), seeks to sensationalize scientific claims, and extrapolate from that to things like "life after death!"; hournalists tend to misrepresent what scientists have said, and what the scientific facts are. "Consciousness is interrupted on average within 30 seconds after cardiac arrests" becomes "The brain shuts down within 30 seconds..."; which then morphs into "The largest ever medical study into near-death and out-of-body experiences has discovered that some awareness may continue even after the brain has shut down completely."

As for the actual *research*?

The evidence presented by the quoted scientist in the article is flimsy at best. Like someone else said, having a patient claim to have heard a couple of beeps while he was out is not very convincing, especially not when we have no knowledge of the exact conditions (did the beeps continue into the period where he was regaining consciousness, for instance?). That's the only claim of empirical evidence they actually put forward, the rest being the stock standard "some people described vaguely similar things", followed by a baseless claim that what are commonly thought to be hallucinations "appear to be real events." I'm sorry, but no; there is no solid reason presented here to think these are anything but hallucinations.

Of course, it's not entirely impossible that some measure of awareness continues after one loses consciousness, but this would be a completely and utterly unremarkable thing if it turned out to be true; because we experience this exact same phenomena every fucking night.; we lose consciousness when we go to sleep, yet still retain some semblance of "awareness" of our external environment. Sounds and flashing lights (and other stimuli) can invade our dreams, and we're capable of experiencing states where we're half-asleep and half-awake, retaining vague and jumbled memories of events that really happened while we weren't actually "conscious". There is no reason to think a similarly vague/hallucinatory awareness of stimuli post cardiac arrest would run counter to established medical knowledge... and certainly no reason to think it indicates anything approaching the possibility of life after death like the article would have us believe.

 

[Perspicuo]

A tacit conception of supernaturalists is that neurology is a closed subject and whatever it cannot explain is ghostly. What inquiry into this subject shows is that people shouldn't take their criteria for granted, such is when life begins and ends, or what constitutes worldly and other-worldly, moral/good and immoral/evil.

The study of death and dying should be very interesting in the following decades.

 

[4321lynx]

Holy cow. Talk about bad reading comprehension, all of you.

The research means your brain knows what is going on after customary criteria of death are met.

It's like talking to religious believers. Back up. Read again. What is the research saying? Not the voices in your head, I mean the article.

---

Ok, let's try it another way: suppose the article is not talking about woo. What is it saying about people pronounced dead? I mean medically, physically, materially, neurologically.

The editor put a "fantabulous" headline on a story that isn't exactly too impressive.

"Brain lasts maybe a minute or two longer in a bare minority of people - Study finds"

At least somebody read the article. Not exactly passed your pet issues, but it's a beginning. Forget the headline. The research shows there is bodily life after people are pronounced dead.

Then we need to change our criteria of "dead", not burble on about "life after death". After all they interviewed people who survived, not any who did not survive.

 

[barbos]

There was a guy who was declared brain dead and doctor asked relatives about donating organs and such.
The guy was not brain dead at all, he just was not able to move and heard everything. Doctor made a mistake, luckily competent doctor came just in time.

 

[rousseau]

Some of the things the article mentions are a pretty big stretch, more 'journalistic' science then actual science, and we all know what that means. I think that being convinced that this article tells us anything interesting doesn't show much more than a few dots that need to be connected in the observer.

Anyway... heart pumps oxygen throughout the body, oxygen exists throughout the body, heart stops, oxygen still exists and is gradually depleted, body parts function until oxygen is gone, then you're really dead.

From a materialist perspective a living body is essential for experiencing anything. Find me a study that shows consciousness two days after a person is announced dead and I'll start listening.

 

[barbos]

Anyway... heart pumps oxygen throughout the body, oxygen exists throughout the body, heart stops, oxygen still exists and is gradually depleted, body parts function until oxygen is gone, then you're really dead.

Actually, that's not quite true. Cells don't immediately die without oxygen, depending on the type of the cells it could take up to 6 hours. Cells die when oxygen supply is resumed, it's a cancer defense mechanism. So you die as a result of attempts to resuscitate you

 

[rousseau]

Anyway... heart pumps oxygen throughout the body, oxygen exists throughout the body, heart stops, oxygen still exists and is gradually depleted, body parts function until oxygen is gone, then you're really dead.

Actually, that's not quite true. Cells don't immediately die without oxygen, depending on the type of the cells it could take up to 6 hours. Cells die when oxygen supply is resumed, it's a cancer defense mechanism. So you die as a result of attempts to resuscitate you

Fair enough. I was pretty much just making shit up and assuming that's what happened.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Next, we should waste taxpayer dollars and fund research to find out if hallucinogenic drugs prove that toasters can talk.

This depends on which one(s) they take of course. LSD may be a good candidate.