In October the Daily Telegraph ran a piece with the headline ‘There is evidence of life after death, say scientists’.
It focused on work at Southampton University examining evidence from more than 2,000 cardiac arrest patients at 15 hospitals in the UK, US and Austria of near-death and out-of-body experiences. Of the 2,060 cardiac arrest patients studied, 330 survived and 140 said they had experienced some kind of awareness while being resuscitated. Dr Sam Parnia, formerly of Southampton but now based at the State University of New York, says that many more people may have experiences when they are close to death, but drugs or sedatives used in the process of resuscitation may stop them remembering. The study was recently published in the journal Resuscitation. Dr Jerry Nola, editor of that journal, said: ‘Dr Parnia and his colleagues [have produced] a fascinating study that will open the door to more extensive research into what happens when we die’.
