Pam Reynold's Near Death Experience

[McHeathen]

Has this topic ever been discussed on these forums? I came across it here:
http://www.neardeathsite.com/reynolds.php

According to Victor J. Stenger all the people claiming to have had NDEs have never actually been dead, because their brains were still alive. Death is not longer defined as the stopping of the heart and breathing. Death is now defined as a flat EEG i.e. 'brain death'. He goes on to say that no one has ever survived a 'flat EEG'.

Yet in 1991 Pam Reynolds underwent a rare operation to remove a giant basilar artery aneurysm in her brain that threatened her life. She was referred to a doctor who had pioneered a daring surgical procedure known as hypothermic cardiac arrest. It allowed Pam's aneurysm to be excised with a reasonable chance of success. This operation, nicknamed "standstill" by the doctors who perform it, required that Pam's body temperature be lowered to 60 degrees, her heartbeat and breathing stopped, her brain waves flattened, and the blood drained from her head. In everyday terms, she was put to death. After removing the aneurysm, she was restored to life. During the time that Pam was in standstill, she experienced a NDE.

Of course it was in 1990 when Victor J. Stenger's book 'Physics and Psychics' was published. I expect many will say that the NDE occurred shortly before or after her brain waves flattened.

Pam's experience was highlighted in Dr. Michael Sabom's book 'Light and Death'. Despite being a cardiologist Dr Sabom is obviously cashing in on gullible people's belief that NDEs are scientific evidence of an after-life.

 

[pftest]

One part of Pam's NDE is her being aware of a conversation of the people in the surgery room. In particular there is a part where she hears them talking about which vein to open up, and she hears they will open one in her legs (something like that). I am no surgeon, but i believe that part of the surgery happens before the blood is drained. I don't know if its before the freezing and before the cardiac arrest. If so it would show that at least some part of the NDE was already taking place before the "standstill". Some skeptics have suggested that the whole thing was an episode of awareness during anesthesia.