March 17, 2006
By Jenny Still
What happens when we die
Dr Sam Parnia
Hay House UK, 2005
The blackouts in Cape Town have got us thinking about the value of light, whether it's at the end of a tunnel in a near-death experience, or just in your kitchen so that you don't stumble over the dogs.
Near-death experiences seem to be among those topics that either interest you or leave you cold - that's hardly a good way to put it, but when you discuss death, vocabulary becomes a minefield of puns and expressions you should steer clear of.
Parnia's highly readable account of how he stumbled across his life's work when he was a medical intern is easy to tackle, as it is just
scientific enough for the lay reader.
He draws you in with many case studies, some with happier endings than others, and he remembers to acknowledge the contributions of his colleagues and friends in the field.
As a boy he always wanted to know how things worked. Then as a teenager he was fascinated by a television documentary on near-death experiences, known as NDEs.
After he had qualified as a doctor in the mid-1990s, Parnia met Dr Peter Fenwick, an eminent neuropsychiatrist at King's College Hospital in London who helped him with his study of NDEs and became a close friend
. Fenwick wrote the foreword to this book.
Parnia set up the groundbreaking Southampton Study in 1997, working with a BBC science television producer, among others. For a start, he wanted to research the anecdotal reports of people who were born blind but had been able to see things for the first time in an out-of-body experience during a critical illness.
Anyone in the medical, nursing and related fields will be interested in Parnia's work. He writes with such enthusiasm that one can understand how he and his team put in so many hours.
He also discusses children who have had NDEs. One young boy, Andrew, flummoxed his mother when he said he wanted to go back to "the sunny place with the lady that floats", who turned out to have been his late grandmother. His mother was astounded when later a much healthier Andrew looked at a picture of his gran as a young woman and said: "That's the lady who floats."
This is a book that you will want to give friends who have had similar experiences, or who have lost someone and are hoping to somehow find out where they are and what they would like us back on earth to know.
Parnia includes enough medical data about the brain and our minds to give his account substance and to enable readers to do their own research.
  
 
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