Rationale: Near death experiences have been documented to cause a characteristic transformation in personality profile. Persons having NDEs are reportedly happier, healthier, and lead more socially conscious lives. They are often optimistic people who believe that all of life has purpose and meaning. This transformation, however, is primarily documented on the basis of psychological tests in which the research subjects tell us about themselves. Most studies made little or no effort at objective verification of the self reports.
There is reason to believe that there is a unique immunological signature to the near death experience. Numerous studies have documented that different psychological states such as being optimistic or pessimistic have their own unique immunological profile. Consumer Reports Magazine has an excellent summary of this research in its book on Mind-Body Healing, and Herbert Benson reviews this research in several books including his most recent: Timeless Healing. One of the transformations attributed to the near death experience is that the experiencers report becoming more happy and optimistic, with a tendency to see the “glass” as half full.
My study would attempt to see if having a near death experience correlates with a similar immune system profile as previously found in happy optimistic people. The results of this study could help us to properly interpret previous psychological studies of the transformation of the near death experience. Such a correlation would be an invaluable aid in future near death research. It would provide a universal and fairly objective marker of the experience.
One major roadblock in current near death research is that there is no one common definition of what a near death experience is! This makes comparison of different research groups’ data difficult. Having a blood test, which could help to define the experience, could be an enormous breakthrough in near death studies.
Cost: An initial preliminary study could be done for $80,000. I would want to study the blood of twenty volunteers who have had well documented near death experiences. A part-time research associate would investigate their medical histories, and administer to them psychological profiles.
Immunological studies are extremely expensive, running over $1000 per study. We would need 3 studies on each person, to get a comprehensive view of their immune system, as one’s immune profile changes from day to day.
This study, if positive, could be used as the basis for a larger publicly or privately funded prospective study of the same issue. We would work with a cardiac clinic in a large city hospital. Such clinics have patients who are likely to undergo cardiac arrest. A certain percentage of those patients will survive, and a certain percentage of those will report near death experiences.
We would be able to collect samples from every patient as they enter the clinic, and then could repeat studies in patients after their near death experiences. Such a study would involve thousands of patients, and would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, I believe that a well-done pilot study of the question could result in winning a major grant to resolve the question. If no correlation is discovered, that in itself will be a valuable contribution to near death research. I will publish whatever result I get, in both the scientific literature and this newsletter.
Rationale: We currently spend 6 billion dollars a year on intrusive medical care for the dying that does not prolong life at all. It is well established that a lack of communication between health care professionals, patients and families is mostly to blame for this. Physicians think patients want this care, patients think physicians are forcing it on them, and families want to do what is "best". A gut wrenching dialogue is needed to determine what should be done for a given patient, not just what can be done. We all to often think that quality care is doing everything medically possible even if it isn't medically rational.
I am proposing to develop a small prototypical model of a spiritual vocabulary and "toolbox" of standard questions and techniques designed to initiate a conversation between the dying and caregivers. This conversation would start with spiritual concepts and naturally evolve into end of life quality of care issues. I would like to develop a reproducible model that could be used by trained volunteers in virtually any health care environment, from community hospitals to large tertiary care centers.
I have already developed a complete grant proposal and well developed protocol for both the initiation of such a model and ways to document if it saves the health care system money. We would carefully track the costs of end-of-life care for patients enrolled in our program and compare them to similar patients who are not enrolled in our spiritual care curriculum for the dying.
It is not as yet funded. I could complete a small pilot project for under $200,000. Your contributions will help this research.
I firmly believe that if we can develop a more robust dialogue concerning spiritual issues surrounding death and dying, then more difficult issues such as what end-of-life care is needed in a given situation will naturally follow. In turn we will see a withering away of unnecessary end-of-life care and tremendous financial savings for our health care system.
