Dittrichs investigation costs $1.99, but new and existing MATTER members have free access click here to learn more. Eben Alexander is very explicit with what she looked likedeep blue eyes, high cheek bones and long golden-brown hair. In addition, other neurological examinations, such as the pupillary light reflex, indicate the status of brainstem function. The contours of the story I was working on were already clear. Just want to read The Prophet? A dead hypothesis, by contrast, cannot fit into a persons understanding of the world. Alexander, a Harvard neurosurgeon, nearly died four years ago when a ferocious E. coli meningitis infection attacked his brain and plunged him deep into a week-long coma. They told him they didnt have the capacity to meet a new child as they mourned another. Become A Contributor Upon arriving at the hospital, it was determined that Dr. Alexander's muscle spasm, was actually a rare form of bacterial meningitis that had infected his brain, leaving him in a coma. Proof of Heaven, How Emotions are Made, Business Adventures, How We Got to No. Dittrich commented, "It was as though heaven itself was cheering Alexander's return.". Perhaps profit is beside the point. Indeed, as we shall see, Dr. Potter's statements were apparently pretty damning. Were they concerned that Luke Dittrich might have misheard Dr. Potter or possibly misinterpreted what she had told him? Here Dittrich picks up the story: [45:50] His Holiness explained that phenomena are categorized into "evident phenomena" that can be studied by direct observation, "hidden phenomena" that can be inferred based on observed phenomena, and then the third category is "extremely hidden phenomena" which can be accessed only through our own first-person experience or the first-person testimony of someone else. The most famous was Dr. Eben Alexander's tale, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, which was released in October 2012, featured on Dr. Oz, on Larry King Live, on Oprah and on the cover of Newsweek. Thus began Alexanders seven-day spiritual odyssey. He described her to me and his wife Holley in minute detail, down to her golden streaked hair, blue eyes, and dress. People who are born with Jupirer as the ruling planet are optimistic and have a big appetite for life. What separated the before from the after was an infection. Susan later reached out to Eben in a meditative state, "descending" to a very deep level, until she was sure she had reached him. It's possible like that. In professions like medical and legal practice, malpractice involves negligence or incompetence on the part of a professional. Luke Dittrich is an award-winning writer. Seizures are caused by abnormal, excessive neuronal firing in the brain. A "Peak in Darien" experience with a further confirmation. So was Eben Alexander conscious during his stay in the hospital? But Dittrich calls into question not, had to make the decision to just place him in a chemically induced coma." Dr. Eben Alexander is speaking at a podium. I put him to sleep, if you will, and put him on life support.". Alexander claims he spent that time in heaven. In their minds, Eben Alexander is a complete fraud and deserves to be exposed as such. If Sacks had taken the time to read Proof of Heaven and his medical report, Alexander claims, Sacks would tear up his original article and throw it out.. If you see something that doesnt look right, contact us. He would find out years later that his birth family was still grieving the death of his biological younger sister, who had died two years earlier. In Alexanders telling, his near-death experience changed his life. He says that initially, he thought it had all been a hallucination, perhaps something superimposed by the mind as he returned to consciousness. But Dittrich's evidence is clear and incontrovertible. And there were several specific neurological exams showing severe alterations: abnormal posturing indicating damage to the cortex and thalamus, florid papilledema indicating elevated intracranial pressure, fixed pupils indicating brainstem damage, and no vestibulo-ocular reflex also indicating brainstem damage. If Eben abandoned this person, the loss would be unbearable, a betrayal Eben simply couldnt commit. There were lots of measures of how serious his condition was: the very quick onset of his symptoms, persistent seizure (status epilepticus), the presence of E. coli bacteria in his cerebral spinal fluid (CSF), the high white blood cell count and high protein level in his CSF, the very low glucose level in his CSF, and the CT scans of his brain that showed diffuse edema, damage in all eight lobes of his cortex and widespread blurring of the gray-white junction. What is at stake here is a man's reputation. When he awoke, he described having visited heaven a claim that led to a best-selling book, wealth and fame. After all, who could have a greater spiritual insight into a person's character than His Holiness the Dalai Lama? Peak in Darien experiences in NDEs are fairly rare but they are striking and moving revelations to all who hear them. Of course, at the time Alexander was in a coma, so he was either told this purported fact by Holley or someone else, or he just made it up to give another dramatic, emotional twist to the story. When I saw Betsys photo, which rests on his bureau, I was stunned to realize that Betsy was the woman who had been described to us, right down to her high cheekbones. For His Holiness, Eben Alexander has no reason to lie and therefore one can take Alexanders testimony to be credible. Others worry that he is peddling snake oil to the sick, using his story to sell false hope to a vulnerable population. Alexander strongly disputes these claims. Holley took me into the bedroom and said, "You won't believe this." Dr. Eben Alexander was an atheist. At this time, the correlations of the time anchorparticularly the recognition of people who were not physically presentstrongly suggest that Eben Alexander's experience could not have been constructed in the moments after recovering consciousness, as some skeptics have suggested. Only a year before his illness, he was finally reunited with his birth parents, who had later married after his adoption and had had other children. Some would argue that science can be proven with theories, tests and cold, hard facts. But did Luke Dittrich and his editors exercise sufficient care in building their case? A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Alexander has written three books since 2012. 1. Zodiac Sign: Eben Alexander is a Sagittarius. Still, the rejection stung. Featuring Neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander. He didn't recognize her, yet he remembered her features and what she wore perfectly. Dittrich continues: [Alexander] notes that by conventional scientific understanding, "if you don't have a working brain, you can't be conscious," and a key point of his argument for the reality of the realms he claims to have visited is that his memories could not have been hallucinations, since he didn't possess a brain capable of creating even a hallucinatory conscious experience. Luckily, Jesus is the Great Physician, and He was hard at work in Dr. Alexanderin more ways than one. He doesn't understand that the power of praying for your enemy is really a tremendous power.. Dramatic, but it could not have happened. He was floating on the wing of a butterfly and beside him sat a beautiful young woman. In response to Dittrich's expos, Dr. Alexander issued the following statement: I wrote a truthful account of my experiences in Proof of Heaven and have acknowledged in the book both my professional and personal accomplishments and my setbacks. He believes we are now living at rock bottom, as disaster in forms like climate change, income inequality, and increasing gun violence looms. Eben Alexanders NDE has both of these features. He inherited his light drawl, along with his name, from generations of Southern surgeons and scholars, and there seems to be an impulse to typecast Alexander as an evangelical conservative. Tracy A. Balboni, an oncologist who helms Harvard Medical Schools Initiative on Health, Religion, and Spirituality, says that spirituality can be a source of comfort and solace for many of her patients. The sedatives were administered to control the seizures. He was promptly transported to the Emergency Room, where he had a CT scan of his head and then a lumbar puncture with spinal fluid suggesting a gram-negative meningitis. When he had an inward questionwhere is this place? Which is to say, I piled up as much information as I could about the person I was profiling, then sifted through it, looking for the storyline hidden inside. And Eben Alexander opened his eyes and began to look around. Grotesque faces would bubble up, screech and then disappear. This interview was filmed as part of the celebration of Dr. Alexander's 80th birthday.He describes his training and interests.Dr. Eben Alexander was in a meningitis-induced coma hours before the sedatives were administered. But how careful was Luke Dittrich with the facts he presented? THE DALAI LAMA INVITES EBEN ALEXANDER TO SPEAK AT HIS COLLEGE'S CONVOCATION IN ORDER TO PRONOUNCE HIM UNRELIABLE AND A LIAR. He taught neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School in Boston for fifteen years, and has performed over 4,000 neurosurgical operations. (p. 92, emphasis added), One has to wonder how carefully Luke Dittrich read Proof of Heaven to be able to say, "There is no indication in the book that it was Laura Potter, and not bacterial meningitis, that induced his coma [pp. He allows that he has benefited from the publication of his books; at the same time, he says that profit is an inevitable result of going with a mainstream publisher, which he had to use in order to effectively spread his message. The incongruity of such a picture is mind-boggling. This article is about the neurosurgeon and author. [48:02] Through then thorough investigation, that person is reliable, never telling lie and in this particular case this is no reason to tell lie therefore, [translator] so then one can take the testimony to be credible. This planet represents abundance, prosperity and the principle of expansion. Above him in The Gateway were puffy, pink-white clouds and transparent orbs of shimmering beings, perhaps angels, singing in a glorious, palpable chant. My wife is convinced that the guy is the real deal and she . Alexander describes it as dark and blurry, like being submerged in a kind of transparent mud, with deep rhythmic pounding, a disgusting feces-like smell and root-like structures around him. Shahram Khoshbin, a neurologist and Harvard professor in the medical humanities, expresses reservations about the utility of such stories. If Luke Dittrich had read Proof of Heaven with any care, he would have found a definitive statement of the facts about Alexanders coma in Appendix A, from Alexanders infectious disease specialist Dr. Scott Wade: Dr. Alexander had become ill quickly with flu-like symptoms, back pain, and a headache. Alexander exhibited status epilepticus or persistent seizures. He places the odds of this somewhere between one in ten million and one in a billion. Dittrich makes this his theme for critiquing the story of Alexander's NDE, that Alexander altered the facts of his story to make them more dramatic. Finally Alexander entered an immense infinite void, completely dark but also brimming with a light from a brilliant Orb. Dittrich describes the key question: I ask Potter whether the manic, agitated state that Alexander exhibited whenever they weaned him off his anesthetics during his first days of coma would meet her definition of conscious. His brain's minimal, intermittent electrical activity produced a minimal consciousnessa dull inward vision and rudimentary hearing and smell. I have never been found guilty of malpractice, but I have settled several cases brought against me, he writes in an emailed statement. The following year, he took up a joint appointment teaching at Harvard Medical School and practicing at Brigham and Womens Hospital. Considering that Dittrich was calling into question a man's integrity and honesty, he should have investigated this further, to corroborate with other sources, to get to the bottom of the apparent contradiction. At the time, he was the clinical director of the Brain Program at the Focused Ultrasound Surgery Foundation in Charlottesville, Virginia. She said that this incident occurred about an hour or so after she had arrived in the ER with Eben. . Despite prompt and aggressive antibiotic treatment for his E. coli meningitis as well as continued care in the medical intensive care unit, he remained in a coma six days and hope for a quick recovery faded (mortality over 97 percent). I spoke with Holley Alexander recently. Yet it did. A new Esquire featurepokes large holes in Eben Alexander's book about a coma that included a trip to heaven, bringing into question the author's qualification as a neurosurgeon (which is supposed to legitimize his claim) and the accuracy of his best-selling journey. However, the snake can be overly suspicious, which makes them a bit paranoid. As mentioned earlier, I believe this was the result of the initial simultaneous bacterial attack on specific areas of his brainthe hippocampus, Wernicke's language comprehension region and the frontal lobes. One of the things about religions that I adore as a physician is that allows for hope.. Eben Alexander's experience has the additional confirmation that his own descriptions of the beautiful young woman were so vivid that they could be confirmed by those who similarly had never met Betsy. She would look at me and the thoughts would come directly into my mind, into my awareness. Could there have been a rainbow the morning of the sixteenth? Summary. The 50s were also the beginning of the Space Race, Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement. This point goes to the heart of Eben Alexander's story, because according to Alexander he didn't have a working brain and therefore his memories couldn't have been hallucinations. Alexander has benefitted fr. The chants and hymns thundering down from [the] angelic choirs provided yet another portal to higher realms, eventually ushering my awareness into the Core, he continues. Past the white light at the end of a tunnel, he saw a valley blushing with flowers, waterfalls tumbling into pools, revelers whirling arm in arm, and a girl flying on a giant butterfly. In his own words, I was my own worst skeptic. It was only later, as he compared his experience to that of others that he noticed similarities. When a man makes extraordinary claims, a "thorough investigation" is required, to ensure "that person reliable, never telling lie," and has "no reason to lie." These hippie kids protested against the Vietnam War and participated in the civil rights movement. I stand by every word in this book and have made its message the purpose of my life. His secular worldview began to shift. To Esquire's Editor in Chief David Granger, Luke Dittrich's story is great journalism. [4][7] The doctor who treated Alexander stated that certain details can not be true, such as claims Alexander made about speaking clearly at times he would have been intubated. There is no indication in the book that it was Laura Potter, and not bacterial meningitis, that induced his coma, or that the physicians in the ICU maintained his coma in the days that followed through the use of anesthetics. Rather, souls experience and learn from the pain they have wrought in the lives of others through reincarnation. Eben Alexander had a GCS of 8 on admission. No. When NDErs begin to recount their experience of the light-filled world that they visited, you can tell that they are re-living the experience in the telling. Over those years he personally dealt with hundreds of patients suffering from severe alterations in their level of consciousness. Staff writer Juliet E. Isselbacher can be reached at juliet.isselbacher@thecrimson.com. [1] He was adopted by Eben Alexander Jr and his wife Elizabeth West Alexander and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with three siblings. And Eben Alexander failed to disclose that key fact in his book. Every near-death experience is unique but there are a number of common elements. While working there, he faced another malpractice suit in April 2008, this time for fusing the wrong vertebrae together in a patient. Yet had he asked her, Dr. Potter would have confirmed the accuracy of Alexander's story. Again these aspects of Alexander's experience are very typical, including the message that he would need to go back. When he woke, the first words he spoke . Eben Alexander's response seems all the more relevant now that the facts are a little clearer: I wrote a truthful account of my experiences in Proof of Heaven and have acknowledged in the book both my professional and personal accomplishments and my setbacks. This is the authorized account of neurosurgeon and #1 NYT bestselling author Eben Alexander, MD. One can see that that's not actually what happened. Alexanders theology also fits into a larger worldview. But through my academic neurosurgery career, I saw less and less that that could be the case.. Alexander, though, believes the spirit exists separately from matter. But then, I was rescued from that by this spinning melody of light, that came closer and opened up, and was a rip in the fabric of reality that just opened up around me., The colors were extremely vivid, with millions of butterflies, and these flowers blooming, blossoms opening as we flew by.. He has no idea what that means. There is no Hell, he says. [5], Following the release of his 2012 book Proof of Heaven, Esquire magazine reported that Alexander had been terminated or suspended from multiple hospital positions, and had been the subject of several malpractice lawsuits and that he settled five malpractice suits in Virginia within a period of ten years.[4][6]. This idea stands in direct opposition to materialism, the philosophical doctrine that everything, including our consciousness, is generated by the physical world. Alexander brings to his defense a New England Journal of Medicine article that found neurosurgeons to be the medical speciality most at-risk for facing malpractice suits due to the treacherous situations with which they deal. During the seven days the doctors spent trying to revive him, Dr. Alexander claims that he had a near-death experience -- during which he visited heaven and met God. For those who are suffering perhaps those grappling with life-shattering situations like terminal illness or the death of a loved one accounts like Alexanders are comforting. Real. "Yes," she says. Majority of Ebens money comes from being a doctor. [translator] So when we touch upon the third category of phenomena which is really extremely hidden and obscure, then, for the time being, for the other people -- there's no real access, direct or inferential, so the only method that is left is to really rely on the testimony of the first-person experience of the person himself or herself. Again, this experience of the Infinite Void, of being in the presence of God and of receiving all knowledge and wisdom, is very typical of the deeper NDEs although they are only a small percentage of the total. Eben Alexander is part of the Baby boomers generation. And I just, I really ask, as a friend, don't". They are re-experiencing the feelings of joy and love and the sense of "returning home" that they had in their NDE. Apparently not. Readers who are familiar with Eben Alexander's inner experience will recognize that he experienced a number of these elements, for example, a transition to a higher place, being in a heavenly place, meeting a deceased loved one, being transported to a place of pure Love and Wisdom, being in the presence of a high spiritual being, and being told that he must go back. Theres an assumption that theres nothing more than whats around us the material world that we can see, touch, and feel, she says. What doctor sworn to the Hippocratic Oath would tell their vastly improved patient that they had taken only a sugar pill? bacterial meningitis." Of course, Dittrich's piece is not the first time that Alexander's text has come into question. This scale is based on 16 NDE elements and their intensity, scored 0, 1 or 2. For many of the liberal-minded, the tenets of empiricism are incompatible with a god. It was a reminder that Eben Alexander wasnt just a character in a story. IANDS is holding its 2013 Conference in Arlington, Virginia, August 29 - September 1. It's very clear to Luke Dittrich what is being said here: the Dalai Lama has smoked out Eben Alexander and caught him in the lies that are now all too clear in his book. Did Luke Dittrich miss the highlighted phrases? Dittrich recounts how Dr. Potter described it: "We couldn't work with Eben at all, we couldn't get vital signs, he just was not able to comply. 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