In the comments thread of my recent post on near-death experiences, two people who have published articles on the subject offered their thoughts. Since these contributions may have gotten a bit lost in the sometimes overly spirited give-and-take of the discussion, I thought I would repost them here.
The specific focus of these remarks is the so-called "dentures case," which is described in the main text of the earlier post.
First, three comments from Dr. Gerald M. Woerlee, an anaesthesiologist who argues that there is no evidence for a paranormal interpretation of the dentures case, or of NDEs in general.
Dr. Woerlee's first comment:
What a fascinating number of reactions and entries to a blog about something which people can only speculate because the articles are as yet unpublished.
To begin with – I enjoyed the appalling limericks.
But now is the time to set the matter straight as regards some details, because the discussion on this blog is somewhat unproductive.
I believe my reaction to Rudolph Smit’s 2008 article will be published in the Summer JNDS. My reaction was first submitted in January 2009. The undoubtedly devastating reaction of R.Smit has taken somewhat more than a year to compose. I must confess to being just as interested in his reponse as all you bloggers. These articles are under embargo until publication.
Now for the facts of the case.
- The incident occurred late in 1979.
- The man collapsed in a field near the village of Ooij which is located near Nijmegen in the Netherlands.
- He was resuscitated in the Canisius Hospital in Nijmegen in the Netherlands.
- Pim van Lommel was not associated with the case at all. He commenced work in the east of the Netherlands in 1980, and in quite a different city – Arnhem.
- The man concerned died soon after discharge from hospital.
- Pim van Lommel learned of this case from an incomplete interview of TG performed during the 90’s circulating in the NDE association of the Netherlands.
- Lommel published a very abbreviated account of this story in his 2001 Lancet article, without referring to the year in which the incident occurred.
- Titus Rivas and R.Smit conducted a very extensive, thorough, interview with the nurse (TG) in charge of the nursing aspects of the resuscitation during the course of 2008. This is 29 years after the event!
- The transcript was published in the Autumn 2008 edition of “Terugkeer”, the journal of the Netherlands NDE association. It is in Dutch, but maybe R.Smit or another will translate it into English for you one day. I will not.
- The interview corresponds with the earlier interview, and this incident was evidently a landmark event in the nurse’s life. In my opinion it is an accurate account of the events as remembered and perceived by TG at the time.
- It is a very revealing account, in that it clearly demonstrates the physiological basis of the NDE and OBE story.However, you will have to wait for the JNDS article to read this explanation, and R.Smit’s devastating reply which I too am patiently awaiting. In the meantime try and see if someone will translate the transcript for you.
G.M. Woerlee
His second comment:
Dear bloggers,
One last comment. I have for some time maintained a website with a detailed analysis of the factual elements of the extensive, and very good 2008 transcript of the "man with the dentures" case. This provides an enormous amount of factual details referred directly to pages in the transcript.
the address is: http://unholylegacy.woerlee.org/veridical-near-death.php
The facts related by the transcript are the only known facts about this case. They are all we have by which it can be judged.
I cannot give the original transcript because this is copyright of "Merkawah". Moreover, it is in Dutch, so I do not know whether you would be any wiser for this. Perhaps "Merkawah", or R.Smit will provide an English translation. I will not.
This website contains a wealth of all known information about this case together with my analysis. I will not enter into correspondence about it because my days are filled with many other obligations. So for more information and analysis, you will have to wait for my JNDS article and the devatating reply of Smit.
G.M. Woerlee
His third comment:
For those interested readers, I have listed the facts of the story in the published transcipts of the interviews with TG AT THIS WEBSITE. No interpretation. Just the events / facts / experiences with reference to the page numbers in the published Dutch language transcripts.
Next, we have some remarks by Rudolf H. Smit, who (as mentioned by Dr. Woerlee) investigated the "dentures" NDE and wrote a paper on it.
Mr. Smit's first comment:
From Rudolf H. Smit
Greetings to all bloggers in this thread.
Thanks for all the nice (and sometimes not so nice) posts. I have read them all, and in due course I will attempt to compose a response that will address most of them.
And sure, in the Summer Issue of the Journal of Near-Death Studies we (Titus Rivas and I) will respond to an article by Woerlee. But do realize that because of copyright reasons (in connection to the abovementioned article) I cannot go into great detail.
Right now I am busy with other matters so please give me some time. I will get back to you as soon as I can.
Best wishes - Rudolf Smit
His second comment:
From Rudolf H. Smit -- more about the dentures case
A Hello to all bloggers on this site.
As promised I will now have my say on different aspects of the “dentures man” case. But this will only make sense if all participants had read my article in the Journal of Near-Death Studies. Michael Prescott has been so kind to provide a link.
First of all, I wish to thank Michael for properly representing some important details of this article in the introduction of this blog. This makes it easier for me to expand on some matters.
But, secondly, I am quite frank in admitting that I do all this with a high dose of reluctance, simply because I am truly fed up with the way this dentures man case is treated by the skeptics in general, and one skeptic in particular. For me, and all the others who worked with me in unearthing its particulars, this case is closed. All that could be said has been said and we do so in the article that will be printed in the upcoming Summer 2010 issue of the Journal of Near-Death Studies. (When I talk about “we”, I refer to myself, my co-author Titus Rivas M.A. and a few others, such as (male) Registered Cardiological nurse TG, whose role, as you will understand, has been crucial.) Yet, mainly due to the comments on this blog from that one skeptic I feel forced to again address some details of the case. But due to my being busy with other matters I will present my comments in two parts. What follows now is Part 1. Part 2 will follow at a later date.
The Year of the Incident
Okay, let me begin. Michael makes some point of the fact that in my JNDS article I do not mention the year of the incident. In a private mail he asked me about this –- as he appears to think it’s a relevant detail. Why was it left out? Was it simply an oversight?
My answer: no, it was not an oversight, I omitted it deliberately for a reason I will explain a few paragraphs later. But first a brief introduction on the motives behind my decision not to include the year of the incident.I have been a skeptic all my adult life, but never ever a dogmatic skeptic clinging to one particular paradigm. Because due to my strong conviction that a true scientific approach deals with evidence only and not with ideology, my device has always been: I go where the evidence leads me even if I do not like the outcome. Therefore, I judge cases on their factual merits, and not whether these facts comply with the prevailing materialistic paradigm. If the facts do not comply, then so be it, but next, as true scientists, we should neither ignore the case nor dismiss it as an anomaly and tuck it away in a dark attic hoping that it will be forgotten and preferably burn down with the house.
In my naivity I thought that all skeptics would think and act like this, but I could not have been more wrong. For severaI years I have been in close contact with many skeptics in the Netherlands (I participated in their movement) but in the end I walked out on them, because I could no longer stand their sheer arrogance, their unwillingness to go beyond their safe haven called materialism, their “I am holier than thou” attitude and thus their contempt for everyone not agreeing with them. One of my experiences with them was that they only paid lip service to the idea of “open mindedness”. In reality, their closed mindedness was and is typical for pseudo-skepticism. They won't give an inch, even if the hard evidence is presented to them on a dinner plate. In such cases they tend to dismiss an entire article simply because of small and actually irrelevant details, or worse, “such things cannot be therefore they aren’t...”
So it happened when I tracked down the true facts surrounding the dentures man. In my draft article I had included the year of the incidence, but when I gave it to a critic for comment he dismissed it immediately and refused to read further solely because of the age of the incident: “So long ago? Then it cannot be a reliable account.” Something similar happened with less critical people, although their attitude was a lot milder.
It was because of this that I decided not to include the year of the incidence, thus hoping that also a critical audience would at least be prepared to read on. I assumed that a discussion afterwards would follow and then of course the year the incidence took place, 1979, would be revealed.
A different perspectiveBut all this ado about the year 1979 amounts to nothing when we look at the case from a different perspective.
Is it really so that memories about an event that took place long ago are by definition unreliable?
I think not since it depends on the events and the impact they have. I can take myself as an example. If someone asks me what I did on January 5, 1950, all I can say is that I must have celebrated my eighth birthday. But I cannot remember what presents I got. All I can remember is that most possibly I did not have many friends around, because already at that young age I hated birthday parties.
However, in May 1945 the Canadian army liberated the western part of the Netherlands from the nazis, and I remember clearly how I, as a toddler of three, was standing beside my mother at the outskirts of the city of Leyden and saw the tanks rolling in. Their size, their speed and tremendous roar scared the wits out of me, and I clung to my mother’s coat crying out loud, and that despite the cheers and happy laughter of the crowd that welcomed the Canadians. I can still see it before me, as if it happened yesterday.
Another example: in the summer of 1946, when I was four, a horse carriage ran over my left knee, and I can remember every detail of this whole terrible event and what followed, plus the fact that my left knee never fully recovered.
Hence, it is above all the impact of the event that counts and the impression it makes. Age is of much less relevance, whatever fuss skeptics make about it. In this regard, it is a fact that after decades NDE’rs can still remember their NDE in detail, even when their overall memory has detoriated.
The reliability of the reportsNow, consider the reports that were written about the case of the dentures man.
One long report in 1994, and the other long one 14 years later in 2008, are both based on in-depth interviews with nurse TG (the second interview being independent of the first one!). Their resemblance is truly striking: they are almost identical as for content, chronology and consistency, and... without any embellishment! ... all of this makes the case reliable. Well, no wonder, given the fact that by TG’s own account, this whole episode with patient B had made a deep and lasting impression on him. As he said: “I remember the whole episode as if it had happened yesterday.” In addition, this particular resuscitation was memorable for him, because it was the very first time that he was the nurse-in-charge. On top of that, the medic who was officially responsible for the whole procedure was a junior doctor, an assistent internist, who did not know well how to handle the procedure and relied heavily on TG's expertise. So TG felt the responsibility for a positive outcome more than ever before.Now, returning to the two reports, of course there are small discrepancies which, however, are of little or no consequence. This makes all squabbles about the age of the case a futile and irrelevant excercise.
Even my opponent, Woerlee, admits that these interviews are reliable - if they were not, he would not have gone to such lengths to explain the whole case - in truly materialistic terms, that is...A response to a few commentators
From Roger Knight: Just to play devil's advocate, there is one possible hole in the story. Could a different nurse have informed the patient that his dentures had been removed and also described the appearance of the nurse who removed them? It's not out of the question.
Answer: I have heard that one many times already. But it is very unlikely that something like that would have happened. What we know is that when he was moved to the Intensive Care Unit, the patient was still unconscious and that it required days for him to recover completely. Only after days he may have asked the then serving nursing staff where his dentures were. Apart from being the case that in a hospital there is a coming and going of nurses and other staff (I have experienced this myself) and quite feasibly all the time changing faces due to their various day and night shifts, apparently nobody knew, but more likely would not care simply because there were more important things to do than making lots of fuss about such a trivial thing as dentures. When we asked TG about this he told us that after the whole episode when he stayed home all sorts of thoughts had crossed his mind, but not at all the dentures. Another consideration is that the hospital in question was not a small institute, but a fairly big one giving work to many people – and then it is not uncommon that personnel know each other only superficially and would not at all times be aware who was on duty at a certain time and a certain place.Paul said: Since this case happened 20 years ago, even if you could find the other nurse, I doubt that much weight could be given to their testimony. Even statements taken a relatively short time after an event is observed are susceptible to errors in recall.
Answer: Seen in the light of what I have explained before, I think this statement by Paul has sufficiently been dealt with.
One additionial note. Of course we have tried to track down the two other (female) nurses and the junior doctor (an assistent internist) who assisted TG. But as is so often the case: names are easier forgotten than events, and besides, due to the strict privacy laws of the Netherlands the hospital was not willing to give us names, even if they were still recorded somewhere.Paul said: This is perhaps especially so in this case as the event in question may have held no particular significance for the nurse.
Answer: Again, it is clear that Paul’s statement does not hold. This entire event was of paramount significance to nurse TG.
End of part 1. See you later.
His third comment:
From Rudolf H. Smit
Hello dear bloggers – this is my promised second installment regarding the dentures case.
Again, I do this with great reluctance, certainly now, because for the umpteenth time I must deal with anesthesiologist Woerlee’s “explanations” of the case. Between quotes (“explanations”) because they are not explanations but, more aptly, assumptions. Over the years I have had quite some involvement with Woerlee not only on the dentures case, but also on NDE in general (in connection to his book “Mortal Minds”, which admittedly is quite readable, though advocating only materialistic views on the NDE) and on the Pam Reynolds case in particular. Initially, the exchanges with Woerlee were not unpleasant, but in the course of time these exchanges turned somewhat sour. Why? Because of his not acknowledging of, or ignoring of evidence that does not suit his ideas. But I am not going to expand on that, but rather stick to the case at hand.
Now, to get a better understanding of how the controversy between my team of researchers and him came about, first a little bit of history.Some history
In a way I have to thank Woerlee for bringing up the dentures anecdote in the Journal of Near-Death Studies 22, 235-249, because his account was an incentive for me to delve into the case and track down (male) nurse TG. [By the way: always I mention “male” nurse because every time so often other authors have been making a she of a he. Even in his latest contribution Paul talks about a she/he – goodness Paul, please read a bit more thorough please!] . In those days I also happened to be the Editor of “Terugkeer” (= “Return”, or “Coming Back”) the quarterly journal of Merkawah Foundation which in effect is the autonomous Dutch branch of the International Association of Near-Death Studies. After we, i.e. myself and Titus Rivas, had done and published our in-depth interviews with nurse TG, I decided to ask Woerlee to prepare a lengthy comment to be published in Terugkeer. Because, although Merkawah may be a society for NDE’rs and people interested in the NDE, our Foundation does not constitute some kind of cult, as quite a number of so-called skeptics have accused us of. We are prepared to seriously consider all ideas about the NDE, whether these are materialistic or not. (Although, I have to say that for many of our NDE’rs such materialistic approaches quite often give them much emotional distress, because of the at times very disrespectful and paternalistic ways those materialistic views are expressed.)
Anyway, Woerlee was all too happy to accept my inventation and he duly delivered a long and detailed article, which was published in the Winter issue 2008 of Terugkeer. However, as is usual in a scientific debate I published in the same issue a few rejoinders, i.e. one by Titus Rivas, one by nurse TG, one by cardiologist Pim van Lommel, and a fourth one which in this matter is of less relevance because it did not focus on the medical aspects.
Well, what we were happy about is that Woerlee did not dismiss the case out of hand, something that other skeptics had been most eager to do. On the contrary, he stated that not only the account of nurse TG was reliable but also, to some astonishment of us, that it perfectly well confirmed his ideas on how the entire case had come about.
Two different versions?
But Rivas, TG , Van Lommel, and I could not agree. Because close scrutiny had revealed that Woerlee had either overlooked some important details, or had given them his own twist. In this regard, see what Woerlee wrote on his website :
“Unfortunately, TG gives two stories regarding the timing of removal of this man's dentures. In the first report, TG states that the dentures were removed after starting the Thumper (p14-15 in Autumn "Terugkeer" 2008). This is a logical time, as the Thumper would be started as soon as possible. However, in a second statement TG states that the dentures were removed after positioning the man under the Thumper, and only after the mask for artificial respiration was positioned on the man's face was the Thumper started (p8 in Winter "Terugkeer" 2008). NOTE. This later explanation makes little medical sense, as it means the patient would receive no heart massage for a while. So there is some uncertainty as to the exact time of removal of the dentures. However, I will assume the medically more logical action, that the Thumper was turned on as fast as possible, after which the man's dentures were removed.”In all frankness, the above passages annoy me greatly! What he is saying here is that there are two versions of the same event that are contradicting each other. This is not so, far from it! Alright, in the first statement there is indeed some ambiguity, because it seems as if TG had first switched on the Thumper (i.e. the heart massage machine) and after that had removed the dentures from the patient’s mouth etc. But the second version does not at all constitute a different procedure, but a clarification and correction of the first one. Because that is what TG told the reader, hence also Woerlee, in his rejoinder. What he says here is this (first in Dutch, and next I will provide the translation):
Dutch: De heer B. werd bij binnenkomst in het ziekenhuis door ons overgenomen van het ambulancepersoneel, in bed gelegd, op z’n zij gedraaid om de hartmassagepomp in positie te brengen, weer terug op de rug. Daarna werden door mijzelf, aan het hoofdeinde van het bed staande, de voorbereidingen getroffen om het beademingsmasker te installeren waarbij dus het desbetreffende kunstgebit in de mond werd aangetroffen en meteen verwijderd. Pas toen het masker op zijn plaats was aangebracht was, pas toen dus werd de hartmassagepomp aangezet en de reanimatie dus feitelijk gecontinueerd.
Translation: At his arrival at the hospital Mr B was transferred to us by the ambulance personnel, then placed onto the bed [in the resuscitation room], turned on his side so as to bring the heart massage machine into position, and then turned on his back again. After that, while standing at the head of the bed, I made the preparations for installing the ventilation mask; that is when I found the dentures which I removed immediately. Only after the ventilation mask was on its place, thus only then the heart massage pump was switched on and hence the factual resuscitation continued.
[I have to add that before placing the ventilation mask TG also inserted a Mayo tube into the patient’s windpipe – R]Clarifying correction
Besides coming across as a perfectly plausible procedure, this statement was a clarification and correction of the first one. But instead of accepting this statement as a clarifying correction, as he should have done, Woerlee appears to dismiss it in his later writings (on his website and elsewhere). But instead he says that it is medically more logical to accept the first of TG’s statement. That may seem more logical to him, but it did not happen, period. In an email to him, dated 1-1-2009, I made it clear to him that he was thus misrepresenting the facts. (If any of you so wish I will provide this email, together with translations from the Dutch into English).
Also, I have to point out that in the 1994 interview TG had stated that he had removed the dentures immediately after the patient had been brought in. No mentioning of first starting the heart massage machine.But besides, if it were the first version – first switching on the machine, and after that removal of the dentures etc... or the other way around – it would not have made that much difference. Because it was more a matter of seconds than of minutes.
But Woerlee prefers to use the first version because it suits him better. He has to, because from the very beginning his purpose has been to “prove” his purely materialistic explanation that patient was B was fully conscious from the very moment the heart massage machine was switched on. Hence, according to him the patient could hear, see, feel and all that. No matter that the patient was cold as ice, had no heartbeat, did not breath, had lividity marks on his body, and.... had no pupilary reactions to bright light shone in his eyes, and so on and so forth. Woerlee appears to insist that immediately after the heart massage machine was switched on, blood circulation was immediately restored to such capacity that also physical consciousness had returned. Because as he points out: patient felt the dentures beng removed from his mouth, heard them being laid on a pulled out shelf of the crash cart, had a good view of the resusication in the very brief moments when his eye lids were opened... Will anyone blame me that I cannot buy that?
Not making sense
Quite simpy, this does not make sense. A careful reading of TG’s clarifying testimony reveals that there was absolutely no sufficient blood circulation, but only until long after the whole procedure had started. Hence there was no physical consciousness, period.
Mind you – Woerlee was not there, he did not participate in the procedure – on the contrary, at the time he lived and worked in the UK. Yet, he shoves his version of the case down our throats as medical gospel. The experience of the man who did the actual work he simply dismisses.
Quite recently we consulted TG on this, and it is no wonder that he experiences Woerlee’s behavior in this matter as intolerable and insulting. He now regrets that he ever dared to bring the case into the open. I can hardly blame him.Second opinion
Last year I asked for a second opinion from another anesthesiologist, a man with a similar track record as Woerlee, and who also professes to be an staunch atheist, just like Woerlee. He studied all the articles on this case, and after quite some time I received his comment, the concluding sentence being (in translation): “After having listed all the points, I do not arrive at a conclusion.” In other words, he is not sure. It would have honored Woerlee if he had adopted a similar stance.
This is all I have to say as regards the views of Woerlee. You will read more in the forthcoming Journal of Near-Death Studies. But, besides, I feel no intention to go into further debate with Woerlee who recently managed to say in a forum on Skeptico.com this disdainful remark: “This book [Jeffrey Long and Paul Perry’s (2010) latest book Evidence of the Afterlife] is not science. It is simply fodder for the uncritical followers of the NDE sect”(bracketed material and italics added).
This is the end of installment 2.
There may a brief clarifying third installment be coming, as I had to prepare this one in somewhat of a hurry. My wife and I will be off for a few days, that’s why.
His fourth comment:
From Rudolf Smit - My third contribution re the dentures case.
Confirmation
First of all, I received confirmation about the timing of the switching-on of the Thumper. Remember that Woerlee selected the first option (because that one suited him best) whereas nurse TG had insisted that the second had been the correct one. The cardiologist I consulted said that it is not at all easy to intubate a patient when the Thumper is switched on, which is why intubation is only done when the Thumper is switched off. Hence, the second option is the correct one: first intubate, next place the ventilation mask, and finally switch on the Thumper.
In response to Paul
Secondly, I cannot agree with some of the statements by contributor Paul. What follows now are italiced snippets from his contribution dated August 18, 2010, at 5:23 AM, each followed by my response.
I agree that evidence cannot be dismissed purely on the basis of its age. Where evidence is old though, the circumstances around how it was recorded, the individuals giving it and any corroboration become, you might agree, even more important. It seems to me there isn't a great deal of independent corroboration here to support TGs version of events. That does not mean he is not telling the truth or is wrong - it simply makes it more difficult for me (so what?) to accept that report as being 'very evidential' (other than to TG and the patient).
Dear Paul – It can even be worse: one can easily allege, like the diehard skeptics do, that the whole story is nothing but a fabrication by someone who wished to become a celibrity of sorts? But there is no evidence for it whatsoever.
Look, there are NOT only two possibilities (evidential versus non-evidential), but all sorts of gradations inbetween. 'Evidential enough to be taken seriously and not be ignored' is enough here.
The case in its own right is sufficiently strong to be problematic when trying to fit into the materialistic world view.It is true that significant events definitely do leave much more of an impression on our memories than mundane activities. The issue it seems to me here is in the details of what happened. Could it not be that after such a period of time, TG believed he/she remembers the details correctly but that the actual detail is incorrect?
Sorry Paul, I appreciate your concerns but what you are saying here can hardly make sense, unless you want to be even more of the debunking type than the average CSICOPer. There cannot be much of incorrectness of detail, certainly not when we look at the core of the case. It would imply that TG could have been enormously impressed by an experience he himself had never had gone through and thus had fooled himself right from the beginning – a typical skeptical non-explanation, by the way: the whole story was dreamed up due to the tensions he had to endure and which were caused by the considerable responsibility he had to shoulder.
But then one wonders how TG could have remembered this experience so utterly vividly? According to skeptics and their absurd sense of logic: it CANNOT be therefore it MUST have been self-deception. But when you are simply open-minded then you have to go where the evidence leads you. And whatever one may think, the evidence in this case points at something that does not fit into the materialistic world view. Even Woerlee himself has not for one moment said that TG must have fooled himself due to the stressfulness of the entire incident. TG did a good job, i.e. resuscitating an evidently very hard to treat patient – something he had done before however, hence he was not an unexperienced cardiac nurse. The only possible stressful factor was that he had to carry most of the responsibility, since he was the most experienced one of the four people who gave patient B the required medical treatment. A possible reasoning that this was enough to make TG concoct a perfect story is something that only crazy pseudo-skeptics can come up with. As for that, the explanatory ravings of pseudo-skeptics are often more absurd than seemingly absurd events. But we met in TG a level-headed man who after all those years still does not know what to think of the case as it does not comply with his world views. And such a man would dream up a fantastic story like this one? Too crazy to contemplate such a thought. Just recently TG complained to us that he had ever brought the story into the open. All he wishes now is to be left alone and not be bothered again with the whole nasty fuss around this case.The encounter with the patient was some days after the event as I understand it. Was there opportunity for others to mention his teeth, the nurse who resuscitated him, TG's name, when he would be on-duty next etc?
Paul – I already discussed this, remember? It might have happened but as far as we know, it did not happen, period. But then, so what? See further.
It seems to me there could well have been such an opportunity. Did it happen? TG probably does remember how likely or unlikely this is but is it impossible?
This is very unlikely when one considers the fact that TG was very much impressed by what the patient had said, which did not limit itself to “You, yes you, you know where my dentures are!” On the contrary, this patient went on talking about an incident that in fact was an NDE with an OBE, a concept that was hardly known in 1979. Most certainly, patient B himself did not know about this; he was quite an ordinary man, a no-nonsense figure, in his daily life a steelbender who did not care much about esoteric things. (In general, the Dutch are known for their “nuchterheid” = common sense, which certainly applies to the less-educated.)
Besides, it is more likely that B kept the information about his resuscitation to himself, realizing that the chance of being believed was greater with the nurse who actually resuscitated him, than with the attending personnel in the ward where he was at the time.
In this respect, is should be noted that when TG tried to share his experiences with his fellow nurses, he was met with bewilderment and disbelief. Only one colleague, a KB, believed him and later related the story to Vincent Meyers, one of the founders of IANDS The Netherlands. And as we know, that contact started the ball rolling.As for the possible events between his leaving the resuscitation room and the moment when he, patient B, first talked to nurse TG ... oh sure, anything could have happened, such as the possibility, as suggested by a skeptic, that he ordered a nurse to roll his hospital bed out and so take him to the resuscitation room to have a very close look at everything in there, while at the same time looking for his dentures. O yes, a possibility... but wouldn’t it be a somewhat remote one? It is more likely that B needed a few days to recover before he could start thinking about the whole affair, and it is also so much more likely that the ward personnel had definitely something else on their mind than pleasing patient B to the aforementioned extent only to help him finding his dentures.
Do realize that also in that period, there was a shortage of nurses and other hospital personnel. There was and is virtually no time for hospital staff to devote to the patients – a big complaint still heard today. I can speak for myself because in February 1980 I also spent a week in a hospital to undergo an operation and got little attention from the nurses, except the truly necessary help.
All in all, what skeptics suggested could indeed have happened, but most likely did not. I repeat, the hospital staff had other things to worry about than dentures, and just as likely – as I pointed out – would not have been aware of, let alone would be interested in, who precisely did the resuscitation.I do not say this event did not happen and wasn't a true NDE. My reservations are simply, given the nature of the evidence as presented, about this being a 'very evidential example of an NDE'. I don't see it like that. I do think it is a most interesting experience, I do think it is suggestive of an NDE,
Sorry Paul – by all accounts it was an NDE combined with an OBE. With the exception of the tunnel and the light, it had all the hallmarks: patient clinically dead (i.e. no heart beat, no circulation, no breathing, no reflexex, etc), veridical observations from high up at the ceiling above the body, etc.
Of course, any case can be stronger, but no matter what, you cannot ignore this one, or play down its significance. Nothing “suggestive” about it.particularly the patients general comments about his experience whilst in resus, however these are not reported by the patient, but by a 3rd party - again this doesn't make them wrong but, for some, introduce doubt.
Look Paul, one can go on forever seeding doubts. Of course, the story was related by a third party, yes. But at an early stage it was told to others, one of them being so kind to contact a founding member of IANDS the Netherlands.
But secondly, the two reports show great resemblance and are sober accounts without any embellishments, in correct chronological order and technically okay.Indeed, it is a pity that patient B has eluded us. Most likely he is dead as I reported in my JNDS article. The team that worked on this case has done everything one could do to locate relatives of B, but that was all to no avail.
It is also a pity that we could not find the three other people of the resuscitation team. As for that, the strict privacy laws of the Netherlands stand in the way.
As for the age of the case, we were told that it already featured in a BBC documentary, of 1990 or thereabouts, hence only 11 years after it happened. We have not been able to find this documentary though.
Suggestive of an NDE - yes I think so. Very good evidence - I am not so sure.
I think to have made my point and rest my case.
And just wait for the double article (Woerlee’s and mine) in the Summer Issue of JNDS.Rudolf Smit, also on behalf of Titus Rivas (a name to remember!)
PS – I may write another contribution, but not about the dentures case, but on skepticism in general.
So there you have it. Obviously, my sympathies lie more with Mr. Smit, but I think the remarks by both gentlemen deserve more prominent placement than a comments thread that, for a while, became a minefield of competing limericks.
For the full context of these comments and the objections and questions raised by other commenters, please see the original thread.
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