This book should be read by anyone who expects to die sometime. Others have no need for it. We do not know when, or how, but no sane person denies the inevitability of their eventual demise. We are (probably) the only species to posses this bit of information about our collective future. Knowledge of death comes in bits and pieces when we are children. It undergoes a period of stout denial in adolescence and young adulthood, when we are well aware that others might die, but not necessarily us. For millennia governments have sent people in such a state of denial to fight to the death against other youth, from other countries, who are equally or more deluded that their own youngsters. Ever so slowly the idea of our own death makes an occasional appearance into our consciousness as young people, and then such appearances accelerate in frequency as we age, to the point that old people think about death on a daily, or even hourly, basis; and yet we know little about the process itself, and even less about what happens afterwards, if anything. This book does not have all the answers, but it certainly poses these questions very nicely.
Sam Parnia belongs to a group of physicians who have studied the reports made by patients after having been technically dead, but who have recovered and told takes of wondrous events that took place during that apparent period of no oxygen, no heartbeat, and no life: many patients report floating above the frantic medics who are trying to resuscitate them, they tell about conversations that happened while they we unconscious, and speak about experiencing a great calm as they float through a tunnel towards a marvelous light; they mention being greeted by long dead relatives, and then about being informed that it is not yet their time, that they must go back. They suddenly awake in a hospital bed, reluctant to tell about their adventures lest they be called crazy. These experiences were first studied methodically by Dr. Ray Moody, who published a book about them in the late 70's. Dr. Parnia acknowledges Dr. Moody's contributions, but takes his studies further; after all, medical technology has advanced dramatically since then, and at present there are machines that detect brain activities as a functions of oxygen usage or glucose consumption. Visualization of the brain, a rarity in the 70's, is commonplace with new computerized scanning devices.
Dr. Parnia is a modest but extremely well informed man, and his book contains both dramatic anecdotes of people in Near Death Experiences (NDE), and meticulous accounts of the anatomical and neurological changes that take place during the process of dying. As a good scientist he is neutral about the religious implications of possible continued existence following the physical death of the body; his interest is trying to study methodically the questions raised by NDE. Surely lack of nutrients and oxygen will result in the death of neurons and consequent brain damage. Yet he narrates the case of a young man was declared dead after a long period of resuscitation attempts by a hospital team. His brain and heart monitors showed flat lines, indicative of no activity and ultimately of death. He remained in this dead state for about fifteen minutes while the doctor wrote his chart notes in the nursing station; but unsure of the total number of vials of adrenaline that had been used, he returned to the man's room and found him to be slightly pinker than when he had left him. He called the resuscitation team back, and they managed to bring the patient to normal functions and to stabilize him. Surely, they all believed, this person would have suffered massive brain damage after such a long deprivation of brain oxygen; but on the contrary, when the man returned a week later to thank the staff he was fully recovered and not obviously damaged in any way.
The book is written in simple language that will not stump an averagely intelligent reader. It is free from intellectually insulting logical faults, such as those offered by religions. It loses one star for not having a unified bibliography, but rather offers its references on a chapter by chapter basis: an unnecessary (an uncomfortable for the reader) way of presenting source material in these days of computers. The substance of this book is important to all of us, and therefore WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIE is highly recommended.
