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Woman blames organ donor for behaviour
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Daily Mail pays an idiot for unbelievably offensive and laughable story:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=558256&in_page_id=1774
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=558256&in_page_id=1774
Yesterday, the Mail told the extraordinary story of how a heart transplant recipient in America committed suicide - just like the man whose heart he had received 12 years previously. In another extraordinary twist, it emerged that the recipient had also married the donor's former wife. So can elements of a person's character - or even their soul - be transplanted along with a heart?
One woman who believes this to be the case is CLAIRE SYLVIA, a divorced mother of one. She was 47 and dying from a disease called primary pulmonary hypertension when, in 1988, she had a pioneering heartlung transplant in America. She was given the organs of an 18-year-old boy who had been killed in a motorcycle accident near his home in Maine. Claire, a former professional dancer, then made an astonishing discovery: she seemed to be acquiring the characteristics, and cravings, of the donor.
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There are lots of old sayings like the heart grows fonder ...the heart is deceptive and so on. How do we hold those inner conversations with ourselves ...does the brian rule the heart or the heart rule the head?
Why anyone would find these things offensive i know not.
Unscientific ...i don't believe so but ...some people walk through this earth thinking man knows everything but the truth is ...the more we discover ...the less we know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_memory
Cellular memory is the unproven hypothesis that such things as memories, habits, interests, and tastes may somehow be stored in all the cells of human bodies, i.e. not only in the brain. The suggestion arose following a number of organ transplants in which the recipient was reported to have developed the memories. An article, "Changes in Heart Transplant Recipients That Parallel the Personalities of Their Donors", published in the Spring 2002 issue of the Journal of Near-Death Studies without peer review, sources or evidence, reported anecdotes in which recipients "inherited" a love for classical music, a change of sexual orientation, changes in diet and vocabulary, and in one case an identification of the donor's murderer.The academic organ transplant community rejects this notion as pseudoscientific and absurd, as it has never been demonstrated in a scientific manner. There is also the fear that such notions may hinder organ donation.
Here ya go, afew notes to start you off :thumb:
http://personalgrowth.meetup.com/88/messages/boards/view/viewthread?thread=3085352
Another amazing story, reported by Pearsall, is that of an eight-year-old girl who received the heart of a ten-year-old girl who had been murdered. After the transplant, the recipient had horrifying nightmares of a man murdering her donor. The dreams were so traumatic that psychiatric help was sought. The girl's images were so specific that the psychiatrist and the mother notified the police. According to the psychiatrist, ". . .using the description from the little girl, they found the murderer. He was easily convicted with the evidence the patient provided. The time, weapon, place, clothes he wore, what the little girl he killed had said to him . . . everything the little heart transplant recipient had reported was completely accurate."
http://www.med.unc.edu/wellness/main/links/cellular%20memory.htm
What was most striking were the numerous reports of organ transplant recipients who later experienced changes in personality traits, tastes for food, music, activities and even sexual preference. Is it possible that our memories reside deep inside our bodily cells in addition to in our minds?
www.skepdic.com/cellular.html
http://www.iands.org/ Institute of Near Death Experiences
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_memory
Body memory is the belief that the body itself is capable of storing memories, as opposed to only the brain. This is used to explain having memories for events where the brain was not in a position to store memories and is sometimes a catalyst for repressed memories recovery. These memories are often characterised with phantom pain in a part or parts of the body — the body appearing to remember the past trauma.
http://health.howstuffworks.com/organ-transplant.htm
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/CellularMemories.html
According to this study of patients who have received transplanted organs, particularly hearts, it is not uncommon for memories, behaviours, preferences and habits associated with the donor to be transferred to the recipient.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=381589&in_page_id=1774
Surely if you were looking for something that drove both of them to suicide, you'd look at the shared wife before the shared heart?
Here's the original article that she's referring to by the way.
Can we really transplant a human soul?
From the same man who brought us:
The Angels of Death
Could Spiritual Healing Actually Work?
Could there be proof to the theory that we're ALL psychic?
"Dr." Danny Penman (a real doctor by the way, just not in any field that would give him any authority on such subjects - but a great way of giving yourself a bit more authority as a journalist to gullible readers - his pHD was for the study of fungus on cocoa plants if anyone is interested).
When i was about 8 i described what was behind a hill in a photo of my mum and dad cuddling on the grass. The description brought laughter from my parents and it was explained to me that i had never been to that country and it was all before i was born ...but then i gave an even more vivid description of what was behind the hill ...and i was 100% right.
To me there is nothing strange about it. I am convinced that we have genetic memory. Evrything about me is from my parents genes ...including i beleive ...ancestral knowledge and memories.
This would also explain dejavu and people who think they have lived before.
I considered it offensive because I am a registered organ donor. The thought of somebody whose life was saved by my organs attributing subsequent erratic behaviour to me, without any scientific evidence, and making money by publishing irrelevant, personal, or embarrassing aspects of my life in a book and national newspapers makes me feel pretty sick.
Maybe I'm just being selfish
Yeah, and thats exactly what they are - stories. Humans are pretty good at coming up with them, especially when faced with a strange and seemingly miraculous medical breakthrough. Superstition, not science. Which is ironic, because it is science (and the decision of the donor) that saved this woman's life.
I think your refusing to open your eyes and ears mate.
Hormones can change things ...brain cells are not just in the brain. If you had a brain transplant ...what do you think would happen?
Ok that ones a bit extreme ...what science are you reffering to that says this stuff hasn't been happening? The scientific papers have been dealing with this ...'problem' ...since the sixties. There are thousands of cases. aRE YOU SURE YOU KNOW WHAT SUPERSTITION IS?
To be fair the chances of your recepient finding details of you appear to be slim, the woman in the story does not come across as mercenary but having had what she feels is quite a profound experience she wrote about it. In the article she says that the medical authorities did not give her the info of the donor she tracked it down.
The scientific community who specialize in such procedures might be a start, as posted by BlackArab earlier in the thread:
"The academic organ transplant community rejects this notion as pseudoscientific and absurd, as it has never been demonstrated in a scientific manner."
"Documenting" cases of people who believe this has happened to them is all very well and good, and you can believe this stuff happens if you want to. Indeed my eyes and ears are open, but I don't believe in theories without empirical evidence. I'd be willing to accept the theory if presented with peer-reviewed scientific papers, and consider it if at least some credible scientists in the field propounded the view.
As it is, people are welcome to their opinions/delusions, but don't drag the organ donors' lives into it and publish the minutae of their lives for all the world to see.
this is so complex as to barely be understood yet. You have been entrusted with the care and feeding of the most extraordinary and complex creation in the universe. Home to your mind and personality, your brain houses your cherished memories and future hopes. It orchestrates the symphony of consciousness that gives you purpose and passion, motion and emotion.
But what do you really know about it? Very very little.
Until we have some scientific illumination I'll remain skeptical. Nevertheless, I await the first cases of drink drivers etc pleading diminished responsibility in court because their donated organs "told them to do it."
He looked at me strangely and said that I hadn't yet been born when he and his friend had that conversation.
Thinking about it, I remember feeling like they were behind me when I heard them say that. But, I never sat in the front seat of a car before I was 10.
Most likely my brother didn't remember well, but you never know.
Two questions we should probably answer first before we start speaking with any sort of authority on whether it's possible to transfer memories in an organ donation. But I find it strange that no-one who has a limb amputated, or their kidney or appendix removed never loses a bit of their memory with it. As it is, I think the more probable explination is that someone who is somewhat superstitious reacts in a strange way to having "someone else inside them." Coupled with the natural side effects of major surgery and the depression that can occur during the recuperation process. You're right to point out that the mind is a powerful and unknown thing. But surely the place to start the research would be in the already fairly well researched reasons as to why a sudden change of behaviour can occur after a traumatic experience? Like someone once said, be open minded, just not so open minded that your brain falls out.
Very few people in the modern western world cling to superstition i would have thought. As for religion ...if that is also being classed as superstition as well ...the people reporting these things don't seem to have any strong religous beliefs if any. In fact someone was saying in another thread recently that those with deeply held religous beliefs are the least likely to have transplants anyway.
And it is even more doubtful that young children and modern teenagers will be tainted by superstition.
What world are you living in? Astrology? Quick fix diets? Anti-aging creams? Magic pills? Homeopathy? That's before we even get to religious and spiritual experiences that people have. People are more than willing to believe things without evidence. The very fact that this Mail article exists is testament to that. But you don't have to be superstitious to have an experience that you might interpret as spiritual, or other-worldly, or as these people have, attempt to interpret it in a psuedoscientific way, when in fact, it was something they can't explain. I don't doubt their experience, but I do doubt their explination for it. But then I'm always dubious when people come up with their own explinations for phenomena that even the most knowledgable scientists can't yet explain. Hell, the first article was "can you transplant a soul?" Now I assume I don't need to point out the flaw in that hypothesis?
That probably explains why they had an attempt at a scientific explination then. Still doesn't make it the slightest bit likely. Like I said, it's just a case of looking at the most probable reasons, and I think the power of the mind to seemingly create experiences and undergo sudden behavioral changes is probably the best place to start and the most likely area to give us the answer we want.
I take your point though about the superstitions bit ...it's a bit disturbing that people still turn to astrology and cards isn't it. Being far removed from such practices and people it is easy to think it doesn't exist ...point taken.