#newjust now
Anonymous Coward
Guest
In 1991 Pam Reynolds had a large aneurysm near her brain stem removed by having her body cooled, her heart stopped and the blood drained from her head. When she woke she described the saw used to open her skull and a remark made in the room. No near-death case is cited more often. It is also one of the few where we know, almost to the minute, what was happening to the patient's body, and that is where the argument lies.
Pam Reynolds reported leaving her body and watching the operation from above, then travelling toward a light and meeting dead relatives. Proponents say she gave accurate details of the surgery at a time when her brain could not have produced or recorded experience, so something other than the brain must have done the perceiving.
The operation took place at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, under the neurosurgeon Robert Spetzler. The technique, a hypothermic cardiac arrest or "standstill" operation, was used because the aneurysm could not be removed safely any other way. Her eyes were taped shut. Moulded speakers in both ears played clicks at regular intervals so the team could monitor her brain stem, and an EEG tracked her cortex.
The cardiologist Michael Sabom first interviewed her in November 1994 and published the case in Light and Death (Zondervan, 1998), with a timeline taken from the surgical record. In outline:
Her account of the saw is specific:
The saw thing ... looked like an electric toothbrush and it had a dent in it, a groove at the top where the saw appeared to go into the handle, but it didn't ...
Pam Reynolds, interviewed by Michael Sabom, as quoted in the Psi Encyclopedia entry on the case
She also recalled a female voice saying "something about my veins and arteries being very small", which Sabom places at the point when the surgeons were opening her left leg to reach the femoral vessels. She said the experience ended as she was returned to her body while the song "Hotel California" was playing, during the closing of the operation.
Spetzler, interviewed later, said: "What she related so quickly after surgery was remarkably precise as to some details that went on in the surgery." She died of heart failure in May 2010, aged 53.
The case has things most NDE reports lack: a named surgeon, a timed surgical record, EEG and brain stem monitoring, occluded eyes and ears, and a patient whose recovery was complete. If any account could tie veridical perception to a measured flat brain, this one should. Sabom argued that it does, and the case features in nearly every book that argues for consciousness beyond the brain.
The strongest objection uses Sabom's own timeline. Both verifiable details, the saw and the remark about her vessels, belong to the period before 10.50 am. At that time she was under general anaesthesia, but her heart was still beating and her brain was working. The standstill came later. The ending she reports, during the closing, came after her heart had been restarted.
The anaesthesiologist Gerald Woerlee ("Could Pam Reynolds Hear?", Journal of Near-Death Studies 30, 2011) argues that her perceptions fit anaesthesia awareness: she retained enough consciousness to hear the saw, the comment and the music, with sound carried through bone even with the ear speakers in place. He also notes that she might have guessed that her vessels were small, because she already knew her blood vessels were small. Keith Augustine (Journal of Near-Death Studies 25, 2007) adds that her description of the saw is partly confused, that it resembles a dental drill anyone might imagine, and that three years passed before her first interview with Sabom, leaving time for details to be absorbed.
Defenders reply that the technologist who fitted the speakers said tape and gauze covered the whole ear opening, and Charles Tart argued that a minor recall error about an unfamiliar instrument does not mean she never saw it. Sabom accepts that the experience began with the saw but holds that it ran through the period of arrest.
The record is real and the details are striking. But on the documented timeline, nothing she reported that can be checked happened while her brain was flat. The case shows, at most, accurate perception under deep anaesthesia with her eyes taped and ears plugged. That is remarkable, and it is not the same thing as perception without a working brain. Rating: Moderate.
No account needed. You'll post as Anonymous Coward, and that ID stays the same for you on this thread.