Grahame Mackenzie comments

Dr Fenwick had a recent interview on the Spirit Today website where he talked about the Pam Reynolds case. http://www.spiritoday.com/dr-peter-fenwick-interview/

Question: Notwithstanding the criticism of the Pam Reynolds case, how evidential do you think the Pam Reynolds case is?

Peter: There are certain clear difficulties about the onset of the experience as it seems to have occurred before major cooling had happened. Having said that, there are also very good pointers to her veridical perception under anaesthesia being accurate. And the deeper part of Pamela Reynolds experience after she had gone down the tunnel etc certainly seems to have occurred after cessation of brain function during the period of cooling and blood withdrawal from the brain.

Dr Sam ParniaA much better case, which comes from the AWARE study in the Southampton Hospital, is described in Dr. Sam Parnia’s book The Lazarus Effect. Here a patient with diabetes felt unwell, had cardiac pain and was rushed to a cardiac catheter lab. Under medical supervision he spontaneously developed ventricular fibrillation and required two sets of shocks from a defibrillator, interspersed by a round of cardio-respiratory resuscitation before the heart restarted. There is thus a very clear time-line of his level of consciousness, which was zero and lasted 3-5 minutes before his heart was restarted. He reports being called to the ceiling by an angelic being, hearing the commands from the defibrillator and watching the resuscitation process, all at a time when he was clinically dead. It is very difficult to argue in this case that the events the patient reported did not occur when he was brain dead, and I think we should accept this as a prima facie case of an NDE occurring during brain death.