The Science of Near-Death Experiences A Book by Missouri Medicine Authors Is Now in Print and World-Standard

Our Missouri Medicine book, The Science of Near-Death Experiences (University of Missouri Press, 2017, edited by John C. Hagan, III, MD) is now in print. If you are involved in patient care or medical education, especially in those fields that deal with the critically ill that are hovering at the nexus of the barely alive and the newly dead, our book and the knowledge it imparts is essential.

As many as 9 million to 20 million Americans are estimated to have near-death experiences (NDEs); perhaps 10% of successfully resuscitated cardiac arrest patients have a NDE. Physicians and health care professionals need to know how to recognize NDEs and how patients, especially children, should be treated after this frequently life altering event occurs. (See Raymond Moody, MD, PhD, Foreword, next page.)

The highly acclaimed and “world’s first” peer-reviewed series on the science and medical aspects of NDEs appeared in this Journal from September/October 2013 to July/August 2015. Because of the opportunity to get NDE research and experience into the peer-reviewed, indexed medical literature we had access to the foremost world experts. Each of these renowned authors updated their manuscripts prior to printing. Our book is worldwide acknowledged as the newest and most evidenced-based study of NDEs.

Our book deals with the essential aspect of physicians and health care workers recognizing and treating a real, well-described and frequent medical syndrome. For the philosophic and introspective among you it may provide: an insight as to the cause of NDEs, their interpretation, the veracity-reality of content, alternative explanations of sentience-consciousness plus intimations of their persistence after lasting death.

The Science of Near-Death Experiences book is available on MSMA’s website, www.msma.org, and Amazon.com. The Kindle eBook version is also available. All profits from the book are returned to Missouri State Medical Association, owner and publisher of Missouri Medicine. When you purchase your copy directly through MSMA, 50% of the purchase price benefits the Health Education Fund.

Please read the thoughtful Foreword by Raymond Moody, MD, PhD, who first coined the term near-death experience (the description and depiction of NDEs date to antiquity) and whose books have sold over 20 million copies.

The Science of Near-Death Experiences

Foreword by Raymond Moody Jr., MD, PhD

“Physicians who treat terminally ill patients sometimes hear the poignant and heart-wrenching question: “What is it like to die?” Yet the answer always seemed beyond the scope of the medical profession and perhaps even beyond the reach of human knowledge. This trailblazing book about near-death experiences provides a partial answer that informs clinicians and comforts dying patients.

Near-death experiences are fairly common among survivors of cardiac arrest and other severe medical conditions. They captured worldwide attention in 1976, and they have held the public’s imagination continually since then. These experiences are bound to become more common with the steady advance of techniques of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Hence, this book is appearing at a particularly opportune time. Near-death experiences present truly interdisciplinary problems that concern clinical medicine, philosophy, religious studies and the neurosciences in equal measure. Professionals in those fields will find plenty of clinically useful and thought-provoking information in this book.

The fascinating papers that this book brings together represent a variety of different perspectives. And the medical doctors whose papers describe their personal near-death experiences deserve our particular gratitude and respect. For their clear conviction that they experienced a transcendent state of conscious existence beyond the physical world awakens questions about an afterlife in clinical medicine. How should we respond to bright, articulate patients who report that they visited a light-filled after-death realm when they almost died? Clinical and philosophical issues are inextricably intertwined in this question.

Clinically, the situation is usually straightforward. Physicians should listen thoughtfully to what their revived patients report. Then, physicians should assure the patients that they are not alone in that such experiences occur frequently among individuals who recover after almost dying. Physicians should also acknowledge that such experiences often profoundly affect patients’ subsequent spiritual lives. Interpreting such an experience should be left to the patient. In particular, attempting to explain near-death experiences neurophysiologically as hallucinations induced by oxygen deprivation to the brain typically alienates patients.

Besides, life after death is not yet a scientifically answerable, testable question. Rather, it is an important, traditional philosophical problem. And the old philosophical problem of an afterlife has intrusively manifested itself at the heart of clinical practice. Hence, it is not intellectually honest to avoid the question in one’s personal reflections. After all, many brilliant, perceptive people of good judgement concluded from their personal near-death experiences that there is a life after death. How can the rational mind make sense of such an extraordinary state of affairs?

Modern medicine and the ancient discipline of philosophy may seem far apart. However, philosophical reasoning is exactly what is needed to grapple with the question of life after death. The greatest philosophical minds pointed out that questions about an afterlife are incommensurable with the Aristotelian logic that underlies ordinary reasoning. Therefore, the emergence of the afterlife question within clinical practice of medicine presents exciting challenges, calling for new methods of conceptual analysis. The time is right for innovative rational inquiry into the biggest question of human existence. This volume is a step in that direction.”

Biography

John C. Hagan, III, MD, FACS, is a Kansas City, Mo., ophthalmologist and Missouri Medicine

Editor since 2000.

Contact: jhagan@bizkc.rr.com