THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 6, 1996 TAG: 9603060037
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVID REED, ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
DR. BRUCE GREYSON waited beside the hospital bed of a patient whose stilled heart had been shocked back to life, eager to hear the man's tales from the threshold of death.
The patient did not disappoint. When he recounted his memory of his crisis, he told of an out-of-body experience.
``He felt that he was somewhere above his body, floating weightless,'' says Greyson, a professor of psychiatric medicine at the University of Virginia. ``He didn't see his own body or see a light.''
The patient's story is among the best that heart attack patients have recounted for Greyson and Dr. Ian Stevenson, co-directors of a three-year study at the university into near-death experiences.
The project, which began in January and is funded with $250,000 from a German psychiatric institute, will compare the mental and physical development of heart-attack patients who report near-death phenomena to those who do not.
Previous studies indicate that about one-third of people who come close to death have transcendental or mystical encounters.
Some patients tell of floating out of their bodies, watching themselves on the operating table and then plunging through darkness toward an intense light. Others report meeting deceased loved ones, having their lives reviewed or encountering an energy they describe as a loving being or God.
They all recount the fascination with another world, somewhere between life and death. Is it somewhere between this world and another or is it what the dying brain sees on its way to the final unconscious?
Current medical technology allows doctors to resuscitate more clinically dead patients than ever.
But some of the patients, fearing they will be called crazy or told they are imagining things, won't discuss their experiences, Greyson says.
The survivors who are willing to talk have formed an association with regional support groups. The International Association of Near-Death Studies has been established at the University of Connecticut.
Stevenson and Greyson say most of their colleagues in medicine believe such near-death experiences are hallucinations produced by drugs, metabolic disturbances or brain malfunctions.
The stories are so consistent and real to those who tell them that the medical community now finds them difficult to ignore, Greyson wrote in a section on near-death incidents in Encyclopaedia Britannica.
``The striking thing is that it is almost universally a light or a tunnel they remember,'' says Pamela Dennison, the head nurse in the University of Virginia Medical Center's cardiac-care unit.
``The other striking thing is how much they resist coming back. The experience on the other side is a much more comfortable one than what they awaken to.''
Many of those who describe near-death episodes say they felt overwhelming peace, painlessness, well-being and an encounter with a loving being, Greyson says.
``There is a fair amount of evidence that people are psychologically different after a near-death experience,'' Greyson says. ``They generally are less afraid of death, more compassionate, more altruistic, less competitive and less materialistic.''
Greyson, who is the editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies, and Stevenson, who has collected near-death-experience case studies since 1958, say physical aspects of patients brought back from death have never been examined before.
``There are anecdotes that people sometimes report miraculous healings after near-death experiences,'' Greyson says. ``They often report they function better.''
Greyson thinks the study will show patients improving physically, as well as psychologically, after near-death experiences.
If medicine can learn enough from these experiences, ``we can find ways of replicating the beneficial aspects,'' Greyson says. ``Some people have attempted to replicate the experiences with guided imagery or hypnotic suggestion.''
Only a handful of American universities study the paranormal.
Greyson and Stevenson say theirs will be the first study that begins with a controlled group and follows it over time. Previous studies have been retrospective and are less reliable because they rely on the memories of subjects who come forward.
Along with what Stevenson called a ``captive'' study group, the Virginia researchers will have access to medical records that can corroborate what patients say about their conditions.
Dr. Ian Sarembock, director of the cardiac-care unit, says it could be difficult for the researchers to develop case studies because most people whose hearts stop either die or suffer brain damage.
``Few,'' he says, ``actually survive to tell the tale.''
KEYWORDS: OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCE STUDY by CNB