On 10 April 1901 Duncan MacDougall together with four other physicians were waiting for six people to die. In a hospital in Dorchester, Massachusetts, each patients' entire bed was placed on an industrial sized Fairbanks scale that was sensitive within two tenths of an ounce (5.6 grams). After a few hours waiting, the patients died and something strange happened.
As soon as they died the scales dropped. They lost weight. The conclusion was that a human soul left the body and registered the loss of 21 grams. The weight of a mouse. Repeating the experiment with dogs resulted in no loss of weight, indicating that dogs have no soul to lose.
Since the soul was material, Duncan MacDougall reasoned that we should be able to measure it. Four years later the New York Times reported in a front-page story that MacDougall tried to take X-rays of the soul escaping the body at the moment of death. Then MacDougall died in 1920 at the young age of 54 leaving behind many questions and many charlatans to capitalize on his scientific legacy.
Following the publication of these experiments—both in the popular media as well as in academic journals—his colleague physician Augustus Clarke criticized the experiments. Clarke argued that the loss of 21 grams could be accounted for by expiration. Clarke noted that at the time of death as the lungs are no longer cooling blood there is a sudden rise in body temperature, causing a subsequent rise in evaporative sweating. Since dogs do not have sweat glands, and therefore cannot lose weight in this manner Clarke argued that the experiments were flawed.There was evidence to suggest that MacDougall knew of this alternate interpretation to his experiments beforehand.
Measuring is the scientific method. The medical historian Mirko Dražen Grmek wrote about the scientists Santorio Santorio (1561-1636) who diligently weighed and measured everything. In particular Santorio weighed all the food and drink that he ingested. He also measure all that come out the other end—feces and urine. After measuring his weight, the remaining weigh loss is due to something else. For every eight pounds consumed Santorio found that he only excreted three pounds. Five pounds of food and drink could not be accounted for.
It was not until 1862 that the infamous hygienist Max von Pettenkoffer constructed an insulated room designed to measure the exact amount of evaporative sweat and heat the body generated. As a hygienist, promoting good sewage and public health approach to health, Max von Pettenkoffer designed a machine—respiration calorimenter—for measuring heat given off by body’s chemical reactions and physical changes expended by a person at rest, standing and walking. He measured the weight of this metabolic energy use.
All the evidence was already there to suggest that our metabolism—the energy expanded in maintaining bodily functions—generates evaporative loss of weight. And MacDougall knew this. In his original paper he reports that: “He [dying patient] lost weight slowly at the rate of one ounce per hour due to evaporation of moisture in respiration and evaporation of sweat.” But he also addressed this loss as an explanation for the loss of weight when the patients died: “This loss of weight could not be due to evaporation of respiratory moisture and sweat, because…this loss was sudden and large…” It's undeniable that something else is taking place.
True science can only be conducted through experimentation. MacDougall’s theory, that there had to be “continuity” in life after death—a soul—was the incentive for his experimentation. The theory assumes that we know when people die. As strange as this question might seem there is no easy definition.
Our definition of death is a legal rather than a biological definition. In medicine it is a prognosis—predicting—rather than a diagnosis—confirming. Having no brain or heart activity indicates that the patient is unlikely to come back alive, it is by no means indicative of the body. Organs can still be harvested with the patient being dead. The legal definition of death does protect surgeons from liability when they are harvesting organs for transplantation.
In 1968—a year after the South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the world's first human heart transplant—Stanford University surgeon Norman Shumway performed the first USA heart transplant from a brain-dead donor. These were nearly identical surgical procedures, except whereas Barnard’s surgery was received with adulation; in the United States, Shumway nearly ended up being prosecuted for conducting the operation. John Hauser, the Santa Clara County coroner, met Shumway with a threat of prosecution. The infringement was that the donor did not have an autopsy performed to confirm that he was dead since performing an autopsy would have ruined the organs for transplantation. Surgeons were being accused as killers. As a result of this threat of prosecution, organ donations stopped or slowed dramatically. Like an old Perry Mason TV series where the prosecutor is standing in front of the jury, pointing their right hand index finger at the transplant surgeon while declaring “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, there is your killer. That surgeon killed my patient.”
If we are to use the Pope's language, that death needs to involve “decomposition,” “disintegration,” and “separation,” then it will truly stop all organ transplantation. Without the legal criterion of brain death, where the organs remain viable, there will be a dramatic deterioration in the quality of organs that can be harvested and transplanted. According to the World Health Organization, in 2014 120,000 solid organs were transplanted—more than 80,000 kidney, 26,000 liver and 6,500 heart transplants in 93 countries. After Austria, the United States has the highest per capita rate of transplants. Organ transplantation extends lives for a significant number of people. But we cannot escape the fact that this is made possible by a legal definition of death and not a biological one. If organs are truly dead, they cannot be harvested and brought back to life again. However the reliance on a legal definition of death hinders a more scientific study of the biology of death.It is surprising to find how little we know about death.
The British researcher Sam Parnia argues that many people who can be classified as legally dead from heart attacks or blood loss could be resuscitated up to 24 hours after they "die". Parnia has been studying those who have no heart beat and no detectable brain activity for periods of time. While in this state the "dead" patients are given names of cities and when—sometimes, if—they recover patients are asked to ‘randomly’ name cities. They found that the patients are more likely to choose the same cities that they were exposed to while unconscious—legally dead. It seems that when we are dead we are still aware, although not conscious.
Pozhitkov and colleagues in 2017 found that death is not just a shutting down, but an orchestrated event. The authors found mRNA transcript profiles of 1063 genes became significantly more abundant after death. Even 9s hours after death. And this is not even, while most genetic activity increased 30 minutes after death, other activity increased only a day or two after death. These genetic activities are related to: stress, immunity, inflammation, apoptosis, transport, development, epigenetic regulation and cancer. We might be as ignorant of the biology of death is as much as we are ignorant of the creation of life.
As with the MacDougall studies there is a problem of small samples in these studies too. But such problems can eventually be overcome with better research design.
Weighing the soul might be complicated if we do not know when we actually die and the soul departs. There are increasing interest in both defining death and capturing the process. But evidence is scant and the methods used to examine death leave room for many errors and misinterpretations. Many publications exist of unsubstantiated reports of souls departing the body—Konstantin Korotkov, Eugenyus Kugis, Vitaliy Khromovaand and others—that purport to repeat the MacDougall’s findings, including photographic evidence. But none are published in scientific journals.
We have a great interest in “proving” things. The problem with science is that it is necessarily finicky with details and the problem with belief is that it is necessarily not. Science is just a method,without an answer. We are always refining the answer and the answer can never be completely correct. Belief, on the other hand, is an answer without a method. It is always correct because we cannot test it and improve upon the answer.
Whenever we mix the two together—science and belief—both sides get muddled. But this space is where real science resides. In that uncomfortable area where we do not know what the outcome might be. Within this muddled space, soul searching might attain a new meaning.
© USA Copyrighted 2017 Mario D. Garrett
As soon as they died the scales dropped. They lost weight. The conclusion was that a human soul left the body and registered the loss of 21 grams. The weight of a mouse. Repeating the experiment with dogs resulted in no loss of weight, indicating that dogs have no soul to lose.
Since the soul was material, Duncan MacDougall reasoned that we should be able to measure it. Four years later the New York Times reported in a front-page story that MacDougall tried to take X-rays of the soul escaping the body at the moment of death. Then MacDougall died in 1920 at the young age of 54 leaving behind many questions and many charlatans to capitalize on his scientific legacy.
Following the publication of these experiments—both in the popular media as well as in academic journals—his colleague physician Augustus Clarke criticized the experiments. Clarke argued that the loss of 21 grams could be accounted for by expiration. Clarke noted that at the time of death as the lungs are no longer cooling blood there is a sudden rise in body temperature, causing a subsequent rise in evaporative sweating. Since dogs do not have sweat glands, and therefore cannot lose weight in this manner Clarke argued that the experiments were flawed.There was evidence to suggest that MacDougall knew of this alternate interpretation to his experiments beforehand.
Measuring is the scientific method. The medical historian Mirko Dražen Grmek wrote about the scientists Santorio Santorio (1561-1636) who diligently weighed and measured everything. In particular Santorio weighed all the food and drink that he ingested. He also measure all that come out the other end—feces and urine. After measuring his weight, the remaining weigh loss is due to something else. For every eight pounds consumed Santorio found that he only excreted three pounds. Five pounds of food and drink could not be accounted for.
It was not until 1862 that the infamous hygienist Max von Pettenkoffer constructed an insulated room designed to measure the exact amount of evaporative sweat and heat the body generated. As a hygienist, promoting good sewage and public health approach to health, Max von Pettenkoffer designed a machine—respiration calorimenter—for measuring heat given off by body’s chemical reactions and physical changes expended by a person at rest, standing and walking. He measured the weight of this metabolic energy use.
All the evidence was already there to suggest that our metabolism—the energy expanded in maintaining bodily functions—generates evaporative loss of weight. And MacDougall knew this. In his original paper he reports that: “He [dying patient] lost weight slowly at the rate of one ounce per hour due to evaporation of moisture in respiration and evaporation of sweat.” But he also addressed this loss as an explanation for the loss of weight when the patients died: “This loss of weight could not be due to evaporation of respiratory moisture and sweat, because…this loss was sudden and large…” It's undeniable that something else is taking place.
True science can only be conducted through experimentation. MacDougall’s theory, that there had to be “continuity” in life after death—a soul—was the incentive for his experimentation. The theory assumes that we know when people die. As strange as this question might seem there is no easy definition.
Our definition of death is a legal rather than a biological definition. In medicine it is a prognosis—predicting—rather than a diagnosis—confirming. Having no brain or heart activity indicates that the patient is unlikely to come back alive, it is by no means indicative of the body. Organs can still be harvested with the patient being dead. The legal definition of death does protect surgeons from liability when they are harvesting organs for transplantation.
In 1968—a year after the South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the world's first human heart transplant—Stanford University surgeon Norman Shumway performed the first USA heart transplant from a brain-dead donor. These were nearly identical surgical procedures, except whereas Barnard’s surgery was received with adulation; in the United States, Shumway nearly ended up being prosecuted for conducting the operation. John Hauser, the Santa Clara County coroner, met Shumway with a threat of prosecution. The infringement was that the donor did not have an autopsy performed to confirm that he was dead since performing an autopsy would have ruined the organs for transplantation. Surgeons were being accused as killers. As a result of this threat of prosecution, organ donations stopped or slowed dramatically. Like an old Perry Mason TV series where the prosecutor is standing in front of the jury, pointing their right hand index finger at the transplant surgeon while declaring “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, there is your killer. That surgeon killed my patient.”
If we are to use the Pope's language, that death needs to involve “decomposition,” “disintegration,” and “separation,” then it will truly stop all organ transplantation. Without the legal criterion of brain death, where the organs remain viable, there will be a dramatic deterioration in the quality of organs that can be harvested and transplanted. According to the World Health Organization, in 2014 120,000 solid organs were transplanted—more than 80,000 kidney, 26,000 liver and 6,500 heart transplants in 93 countries. After Austria, the United States has the highest per capita rate of transplants. Organ transplantation extends lives for a significant number of people. But we cannot escape the fact that this is made possible by a legal definition of death and not a biological one. If organs are truly dead, they cannot be harvested and brought back to life again. However the reliance on a legal definition of death hinders a more scientific study of the biology of death.It is surprising to find how little we know about death.
The British researcher Sam Parnia argues that many people who can be classified as legally dead from heart attacks or blood loss could be resuscitated up to 24 hours after they "die". Parnia has been studying those who have no heart beat and no detectable brain activity for periods of time. While in this state the "dead" patients are given names of cities and when—sometimes, if—they recover patients are asked to ‘randomly’ name cities. They found that the patients are more likely to choose the same cities that they were exposed to while unconscious—legally dead. It seems that when we are dead we are still aware, although not conscious.
Pozhitkov and colleagues in 2017 found that death is not just a shutting down, but an orchestrated event. The authors found mRNA transcript profiles of 1063 genes became significantly more abundant after death. Even 9s hours after death. And this is not even, while most genetic activity increased 30 minutes after death, other activity increased only a day or two after death. These genetic activities are related to: stress, immunity, inflammation, apoptosis, transport, development, epigenetic regulation and cancer. We might be as ignorant of the biology of death is as much as we are ignorant of the creation of life.
As with the MacDougall studies there is a problem of small samples in these studies too. But such problems can eventually be overcome with better research design.
Weighing the soul might be complicated if we do not know when we actually die and the soul departs. There are increasing interest in both defining death and capturing the process. But evidence is scant and the methods used to examine death leave room for many errors and misinterpretations. Many publications exist of unsubstantiated reports of souls departing the body—Konstantin Korotkov, Eugenyus Kugis, Vitaliy Khromovaand and others—that purport to repeat the MacDougall’s findings, including photographic evidence. But none are published in scientific journals.
We have a great interest in “proving” things. The problem with science is that it is necessarily finicky with details and the problem with belief is that it is necessarily not. Science is just a method,without an answer. We are always refining the answer and the answer can never be completely correct. Belief, on the other hand, is an answer without a method. It is always correct because we cannot test it and improve upon the answer.
Whenever we mix the two together—science and belief—both sides get muddled. But this space is where real science resides. In that uncomfortable area where we do not know what the outcome might be. Within this muddled space, soul searching might attain a new meaning.
© USA Copyrighted 2017 Mario D. Garrett
References
Grmek, M. D. (1952). Santorio Santorio i njegovi aparati i instrumenti. Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti.
Kuriyama, S. (2008). The forgotten fear of excrement. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 38(3), 413-442.
Pozhitkov, A. E., Neme, R., Domazet-Lošo, T., Leroux, B. G., Soni, S., Tautz, D., & Noble, P. A. (2017). Tracing the dynamics of gene transcripts after organismal death. Open biology, 7(1), 160267.
Pozhitkov, A. E., Neme, R., Domazet-Lošo, T., Leroux, B. G., Soni, S., Tautz, D., & Noble, P. A. (2017). Tracing the dynamics of gene transcripts after organismal death. Open biology, 7(1), 160267.
MacDougall, D. (1907). Hypothesis concerning soul substance together with experimental evidence of the existence of such substance, American Medicine, April 1907.
Parnia, S., Waller, D. G., Yeates, R., & Fenwick, P. (2001). A qualitative and quantitative study of the incidence, features and aetiology of near death experiences in cardiac arrest survivors. Resuscitation, 48(2), 149-156.
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