Then we saw that these theories were being backed-up by the forgetful Hawaiian, polymath Dr Paul Pearsall. After being prompted to look into Dr Paul Pearsall a little more, I came to understand that his theories of ‘cellular memory’ in transplant patients have indeed been published.

Two places appear to have the privilege of his thoughts, Nexus magazine and the Journal of Near Death Experiences.

A peer reviewed journal? Maybe this theory has been peer-reviewed after all? Maybe it is me who is bonkers? So, I Iook this journal up.

Picking a random paper published in the journal, I go for: “Cheating the Ferryman: A New Paradigm of Existence? ” by Anthony A. Peake.

Let’s run this paper through the quackometer. We get:

QUACKERY LEVEL 4.

Lots of postmodern and pseudoscientific jargon, apparently.

Forgive me for quoting the whole Abstract, but it is worth it…

Survival after death of the body is arguably the most fundamental question facing sentient beings. I present a rationalistic argument for what occurs subjectively at the moment of death, using insights from quantum physics, neurology, perceptual science, psychiatry, and Gnosticism. At the point of death, three events are brought about by neurotransmitters flooding the temporal lobes. First, the dying person “falls out of time” as the speed by which stimuli are processed by the brain is altered. Second, the person’s consciousness splits into two independent entities, the Eidolon (“I”) and the Daemon (“higher self”). Third, the brain starts a “real time” recreation of the subject’s life projected into consciousness of the Eidolon as a reality indistinguishable from the real thing. The Eidolon lives its life again as if it was the first time, but now with a higher self (Daemon) taking the role of a guide. This second life runs in an alternative universe within the consciousness of the perceiver and takes place in the microsecond before the perceiver is seen to die in the universe of any observers. In the observers’ universe, the perceiver dies; but for the dying person, time expands to make that last microsecond last a lifetime. At the end of the second “lifetime,” the same process occurs again in an even smaller segment of time, a literal version of the “Eternal Return.”

I’m not quite sure what this is, but it ain’t science.

So who is this Anthony A. Peake, the author of this insight into a ‘quantum theory of death’?

It turns out that Mr Peake is a “Divisional Human Resources Manager for North of England and Scotland for Nuffield Hospitals in the United Kingdom”. He has a degree in history and sociology.
It would look like the Journal of Near Death Experiences is happy to print the ramblings of bored Hospital HR managers. Now I understand what my private health insurance is paying for.
I wonder if I can get a spoof article published in that Journal? That would be wonderfully funny.

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Here’s a story from the Daily Mail. A man gains a miraculous ability to paint after receiving a heart transplant from an artist! Let’s see what the quackometer makes of it…

0 quack points

Not too good then. Could this be real? Maybe some manual debunking is required after all.

What is being claimed here is that every cell in the body has some sort of ’soul’ that can take ‘memories’ with it between donor and recipient – a sort of 21st Century Lamarkism.

So let’s look at Mr Sheridan’s new amazing ability to draw, before and after…

Well, looking at the pictures above, it appears that our patient has mastered the artistic skill of ‘colouring in’. If you were particularly generous, you could say he even has got to the level where he stays within the lines. Hardly, the next Turner, Constable or even Damien Hurst. I was half expecting the report to say that after he left his hospital bed in a dishevelled state, it was derivative of the work of Tracy Emin.

Imagine the news story…

Art critics have been quick to dismiss heart-transplant patient, William Sheridan’s, naïve art sketches of birds and boats, but after he has recently moved into installation pieces, the art-world has suddenly looked up. Said Dr Schwarz, “After Mr Sheridan left hospital, a Resident Consultant noticed he had left behind his greatest masterpiece yet.”

Although highly derivative of the work of English artist, Tracy Emin, there is no way that Mr Sheridan could have produced such work before his heart transplant. Entitled “My Bed”, the work is an installation consisting of rumpled sheets, lucozade bottles, discarded grape stalks, latex gloves and blood stained hospital gowns.

Jeannette Winterson said “This is the detritus of a life quintessentially his own; it was, above all, confessional.”

Dr Schwarz commented that “this mise en scène was proof of every cells interconnectedness and that ‘cellular memory’ has been contextualised within an aesthetic of dirt and disgust.” He added, ‘We are just hoping that his next effort is not derivative of Emin’s work “Every Part of Me’s Bleeding”.’

Charles Saatchi has denied rumours that he has expressed an
interest in buying the work.

Mmmm. A heart transplant patient. Extra time on his hands. Maybe a desire to try new things. I think that is all the explanation we require to explain our new art talent. So where did this story come from and why did the Mail publish it?

A little more digging reveals that Dr Schwartz is well known to quackbusters. Dr Gary Schwartz heads up the Veritas programme at the University of Arizona. Veritas “was created primarily to test the hypothesis that the consciousness (or identity) of a person survives physical death”. Ahh! real life Ghostbusters.

I guess if you can ‘prove’ that your ‘identity’ can survive a heart transplant, then you are half-way to ‘proving’ that it could survive death. Well, in their minds perhaps. If this is the case, I am a little disappointed that the best-evidence so far for life after death is a hastily crayoned drawing of a seagull. (At least, I think it is a seagull.) I was hoping for better.

You can nominate Mr Sheridan for the Turner prize here.

Related posts:

1. ‘Cellular Memory’ Fails Memory Test After having an argument on a message board about whether Cellular Memory could really exist (see last post), I was offered that the following expert would back up these strange...
2. UK Hospital HR Manager in ‘Near Death Experience’ Let’s recap – ‘Cellular Memory’ – the alleged ability for every cell to retain some sort of energy memory about us that can get passed on through organ transplants to...
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