KellanStec

Yesterday, one of my friends forwarded me to this article on Newsweek. It discusses some new discoveries in the physiology and cell mechanics of the human body. Apparently, once someone has died–that is, their heart has stopped beating–their cells aren’t really dead. Clinically, their body is declared dead, even though their cells are not. The cells can survive for an hour or more with no oxygen!

What was even more amazing is what triggers the cells to die. After more than five minutes of oxygen deprivation, the cells die when the oxygen supply is resumed–a process called reperfusion. The cell death is a misfiring of the natural process of cell suicide (apoptosis) carried out by the mitochondria. This cell suicide is a method of controlling cancer. When the cells are deprived of oxygen and are reperfused more than five minutes after deprivation, the cells are tricked into thinking that they are cancerous and kill themselves. Dr. Lance Becker quotes:

It looks to us as if the cellular surveillance mechanism cannot tell the difference between a cancer cell and a cell being reperfused with oxygen. Something throws the switch that makes the cell die.

Amazing! The implications of this are startling: the standard procedures for treating victims of a heart attack are exactly backward. In attempting to restore oxygen to the cells–and succeeding–we are inadvertently killing the cells.

So, doctors are now experimenting with new methods of resuscitation. What they do is use a heart-lung bypass machine to maintain circulation to the brain while the heart can be safely restarted with minimal cell death resulting. The procedure found an eighty percent success rate among a group of 34 individuals, while the traditional method produced a fifteen percent success rate.

The article closes with a chilling quote:

The body on the cart is dead, but its trillions of cells are all still alive. Becker wants to resolve that paradox in favor of life.

Now, my friend and I were thinking: what could this mean to the world’s religions that believe in an afterlife? If we brought back a number of people from an hour or more of death, we would know for certain whether or not one exists. We would be able to verify what science says about near-death experiences–that they are a result of the natural release of chemicals of a dying brain. Many religions rely on the afterlife as a “great equalizer” for the injustices that we suffer in this world. It gives comfort to those who have lost a loved one to know that they are in a better place.

How many people would be willing to accept the truth if it were presented to them? I wouldn’t have much of a choice to accept the reality if we discovered that there was no afterlife. On the flip side, what if we were to discover for certain that there was an afterlife? Those who do not believe in the supernatural would have to radically alter their worldview to reconcile with this new evidence. Those of faith could boast to be certain about something that no human could possibly be certain about today. I am not saying that this itself could determine whether or not an afterlife exists, but I think there’s reasonably strong evidence that can go either way.

So, my question is: if we could unequivocally say whether or not there was an afterlife, would you be willing to radically alter your current worldview to coincide with the new evidence?

Filed under: Science, Religion, Technology by kellanstec