Back from the Dead

By now most people have noticed in passing the “odd” medical story about the woman who was dead for seventeen hours and then “came back,” apparently none the worse for wear. Most people I’ve discussed this with fall into one of three camps:

1. those who aren’t familiar with the details, and assume this was just another of those “patient’s heart stopped for a few minutes” stories.
2. believers, who are in full-throated “Halleluia! A miracle from the Lord!” mode.
3. rational materialists/secularists like myself who uncomfortably mumble something about “the mysteries of the human body” and then don’t want to think about it any more.

To emphasize the important, often-overlooked details that make this case so problematic: the woman was dead. And we’re not talking about the sort of “heart stopped, then restarted” return from the “dead” that is almost commonplace these days. Rigor mortis had set in. Freaking rigor mortis. The woman had no brain waves for seventeen hours. I believe the medical-science types when the tell me that brain activity is what we “are.” I believe them when they tell me that when brain activity ceases, we cease. To ask where we “go” when our brain activity ceases is a medically absurd question, because we don’t go anywhere when our brain activity ceases. When brain activity is gone, we no longer are. Period. I believe this. I do. When this woman’s brain activity stopped, she no longer was. And then, seventeen hours later, she was again.

So the question, the one that squats there and leers and mocks our hubristic belief that we understand life and death, is this:

Exactly where the hell was she for those seventeen hours?

http://www.newsnet5.com/health/16363548/detail.html

They said Thomas suffered two heart attacks and had no brain waves for more than 17 hours. At about 1:30 a.m. Saturday, her heart stopped and she had no pulse. A respiratory machine kept her breathing and rigor mortis had set in, doctors said.

"Her skin had already started to harden and her fingers curled. Death had set in," said son Jim Thomas.

However, Thomas was kept on a ventilator a little while longer as an organ donor issue was discussed. Ten minutes later the woman woke up and started talking. "She (nurse) said, 'I'm so sorry Mrs. Thomas.' And mom said, 'That's OK honey. That's OK," Jim Thomas said.

Hillary invokes armies of the dead to support her

Well, we all knew it had to come to this. "Hill" has rather ghoulishly trotted out poor dead Ann Richardson, former governor of Texas, and put her on the TV in support of her campaign. What next??? I can see the follow-on commercial:

"Hi everyone .... Jesus Christ here. I just wanted to take a moment to come back in clouds of glory and let you know that when it comes time to pull that lever in November, I'll be pullin' it for Hillary."

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gf97fT9TeFGux6d4utCMmZkMj6CwD8V2EDH81

Richards was governor from 1991-1995. She died in September 2006 at age 73. The two-minute video on Clinton's campaign Web site comes a week before the Texas primary and targets women voters in the state.
"So many women around Texas and America are saying, `Wish Ann was here, for us and for Hillary,'" a female voiceover says on the video.
"Today Ann would be asking all of us to make a statement. She would be traveling to every small town and big city in Texas, urging us all to take a stand, be counted, to make a difference, to make history," it says while a picture of Richards and Clinton appears on the screen. "This one's for Texas. This one's for our country. This one's for Ann."
But sons Dan and Clark Richards, partners at an Austin law firm, say nobody can know who the outspoken and opinionated former governor would have supported in the race between Clinton and Barack Obama.
"As her children, we never presumed to know her mind when alive and we are not prepared to make a claim as to who she would endorse or what she would do if she were still with us," they wrote in an e-mail last week. "We are not granting permission for her name to be used in advertisements on behalf of either candidate."