Parapsychology and Survival after Bodily Death: Provocative Questions, Creative Answers

We need to discover means for increasing the probability that a surrogate's or proxy's de­cision to stop or continue treatment for such patients is neither guesswork nor suspect and fairly replicates the wishes of Cruzan-type patients in their current medical situations.

To this end, first I will try to explicate an approach in which attempts can be made to interact extrasensorially with the patients in the category described to learn the patients' present wishes. Then I will describe a methodology that can be used in order to record objective evidence of the interaction, if any. …

The existence of at least prima facie evidence of ESP was established by the earliest reports of the English and American societies for psychical research and continues to be established by recent research … I propose that we put ESP to use as another mechanism to increase the probability that medical decision­-making for Cruzan-type patients replicates the wishes of the helpless patient…

Nevertheless there remains a towering problem. It is the counter-hypothesis that a test result ostensibly providing a patient's expression of treatment pref­erence has in reality come not from the patient but from family members, the hospital staff or the experimenters themselves who are expressing what they believe is best for the patient (or what they believe is best for themselves). Whatevermethodology is designed, it must meet this counter-explanation and a firm conclusion that the test result is inexplicable except as a response from the patient. Safeguards must exclude all outside sources and point clear­ly and unequivocally to the patient and only the patient as the sole source of expression. Since patients will be unable to corroborate any expression or communication by normal means, the validity of a test result must be estab­lished without doubt by some other method. If it is not, we shall be left by the experiment where we are now - ignorant or uncertain of the patient's real wishes and using guesswork to decide if the patient lives or dies.. .

It is not my aim in this paper to provide any detailed experimental procedure but only a methodology that may show the operational utility of ESP with Cruzan-type patients, and that may ignite others to develop clinical or research protocols.

It is my belief that if devices were to be used and experiments could be de­signed to watch for and record a patient's body language to see if there was any correlation between autonomic activity, such as heart beat, brain (alpha) activ­ity, rate or sound of breathing or changes of skin resistance, and the patient's response to ESP stimuli, the methodology would effectively: a) meet the counter-hypothesis described by showing that the unconscious patient and only the patient is responding to questions about treatment preference; and b) determine whether there is evidence that stimuli have reached the unconscious patient through extrasensory communication.

To accomplish these results, any number of devices might be used - for ex­ample, the electroencephalogram to record changes in electrical activity in the brain or the psycho-galvanometer to measure changes in skin resistance. Let us focus on the plethysmograph used to measure the volume of blood in the peripheral blood vessels of the patient. When the volume fluctuates, the fluctu­ation suggests alterations in the patient's emotions and responses.

In extrasensory experiments with patients, the finger of the patient would be inserted into a plethysomograph cup. In the design of the experiment, an ex­perimenter  using the sensory method or a blind agent or "sender" using ESP, would transmit questions dealing with emotionally laden subjects and about which the patient was known to have strong preferences. Each trial would be divided into general subjects - politics, personalities, sports, ideas, for exam­ple - some of which the patient was known to favor highly, desire, choose or value, and some of which the patient was known to disfavor, oppose, reject. The trials would also include the specific subject of whether the patient want­ed life-sustaining treatment administered so that the patient would go on living or wanted the treatment terminated and to be allowed to die. The plethysmo­graphic deflections would record and establish the intensity of the patient's op­posite emotions and responses with regard to general subjects chosen or reject­ed, as well as the specific subject of life versus death. If the plethysomograph has shown a deflection in one direction for what the patient favors and a deflec­tion in the opposite direction for what the patient rejects, it has provided the means of getting objective evidence that a sensory or ESP channel of commu­nication had been established between the patient and experimenters and that information has been received by the patient, of the patient's emotional state, and of a response received from the patient about his or her wishes concerning the termination of life-sustaining treatment which response points clearly at the patient as its source...

In termination of treatment cases, we are confronted by the question of when or whether an adult terminally ill patient without the ability to communicate health care decisions should die or should live. The question is forced on us be­cause the patient has failed to leave an advance directive or to express con­vincingly prior oral or written wishes regarding the withholding or withdraw­ing of life-sustaining treatment. In this kind of situation the helpless patient is most exposed to surrogate or proxy decision-making based on poor standards and to abuse. This is an area that invites experiments to establish ESP commu­nication with such a patient. They hold out the promise of getting more defi­nite evidence than we have now of the real wishes of the patient in the patient's present situation and of protecting his or her interests. We would be remiss in our ethical responsibility to safeguard the patient if we ignore the opportuni­ties the experimental method presents