HUNDREDS of British heart attack patients are to take part in an experiment that could shed light on what happens when people die.
Researchers plan to test claims of out-of-body experiences made by some of those who have come close to death.
The three-year study, by an international team of doctors and scientists at 25 hospitals in the UK and the US, will examine 1,500 survi
vors to see if people with no heartbeat or brain activity can actually have such experiences.
Some people claim to remember looking down from the ceiling at their body and medical staff working. Therefore scientists will set up special high shelving in resuscitation areas, placing pictures which can only be seen from above.
Doctors will use scanners to analyse survivors' brain activity and consciousness during cardiac arrest and also ask if patients can recall the pictures.
Dr Sam Parnia, from the University of Southampton, who is heading the study, said: "If you can demonstrate that consciousness continues after the brain switches off, it allows for the possibility that the consciousness is a separate entity.
If no-one sees the pictures, it shows these experiences are illusions or false memories.
"If you talk to patients and doctors, you often find patients have given very accurate accounts of things such a doctor walking across a room, knocking out a drip and swearing.
"Contrary to popular perception, death is not a specific moment. It is a process that begins when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working and the brain ceases functioning – a medical condition termed cardiac arrest.
"During a cardiac arrest, all three criteria of death are present. There then follows a period of time, which may last from a few seconds to an hour or more, in which emergency medical efforts may succeed in restarting the heart and reversing the dying process.
"What people experience during this period of cardiac arrest provides a unique window of understanding into what we are all likely to experience during the dying process."
Previous research suggests 10 to 20 per cent of people who live through cardiac arrest recall events during their encounter with death.
Caroline Watt, senior lecturer at the Koestler Parapsychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh, said: "The problem with near-death experiences is that we are just going on a person's report.
"Some critics may be sceptical, dismissing their descriptions as being due to oxygen deprivation. However, what Dr Parnia is doing is putting an obstacle in people's way to find out if they are leaving their body or not.
"I'm very interested in this study, but my main concern is about how narrow a description of the 'hidden' photos would be allowed. Also, I'm concerned about who would have access to the photos and the publicity which will leak out in advance about them."
Testimonies of the nearly deadMEETING A CLOSE RELATIVE
In April 1988, Lloyd Haymon had a near-death experience while having a heart attack.
"At my feet was my younger brother who had died of cancer. He is shaking his head as if to say 'no… no it is not your time'. I suddenly feel a great sense of peace… of just pure peace and I know I am not going to die.
"I actually hear the paramedic closest to me say 'he's back'."
TRAVELLING IN TIME
Mark Horton describes his out-of-body experience on New Year's Eve 1992 while on a ventilator after kidney failure.
"I have a vague, very vague recollection of looking down on a body in a bed with tubes and machines.
"Suddenly dusk became blazing daylight… I was pure intellect… I had merely to think of a place and time and I was there."
MEETING GOD?
René was in a coma for more than ten days following a horrific car crash in 1982.
"I was moving head first through a dark maelstrom of what looked like black boiling clouds.
"I arrived in a room… standing before a man in his 30s, 6ft tall, wearing a white robe.
He said: "You must return, you have a task to perform."
