John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

There is a funny phenomenon that occurs in medicine that is probably better known in the lay press than in the medical literature which is called the near-death experience. That is something which occurs when people have had cardiac arrest or serious stroke and they are felt to be clinically dead. Their pulse is gone and their hearts are no longer beating but due to the sophistication of modern intensive care their brains are kept alive while their circulation is restored. The literature describing what happens during that time is controversial. For many, it is just unconsciousness. People have said they got a chest pain when they were walking down the street and they woke up in the intensive care unit wondering where they were. Other people record a number of different events which occurred to them during the experience, ranging from mystical experiences, which are interpreted by some as being true religious experiences when they are on the interface between life and death and their soul has not yet been wrenched free of their body. Others take a more physical and neurological interpretation of the events and say it is a dying brain syndrome; that if one’s brain is being deprived of blood and oxygen, funny things happen and various hallucinations occur which might involve dead relatives, walking towards the light and religious figures but it is all just one’s brain misfiring and if one recovers one will remember it. Regardless of the interpretation people put on these events, what is common is that it changes them. They often say that their lives change afterwards; their perspectives change; their priorities change. I think Members can all guess where this is going. I am sorry for being predictable.