Coming back from the brink of death is possible, says doctor

S.O.T.T: When people describe seeing tunnels, white lights and deceased family members after their hearts stop, they're dead - but they can come back, believes Dr. Sam Parnia. Parnia, a critical care doctor and the director of resuscitation research at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, writes in his new book, Erasing Death: The Science That is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death, that a person can now be resuscitated long after they previously would have been considered clinically dead.  "The advances in the last 10 years have shown us that it's only after a person dies that they turn into a corpse, that their brain cells start to die,'' Parnia told Savannah Guthrie on TODAY Tuesday. "Although most people think this takes place in only four or five minutes, we now know that actually brain cells are viable for up to eight hours." He continued, "We now understand that it's only after a person has turned into a corpse that their cells are undergoing death, and if we therefore manipulate those processes, we can restart the heart and bring a person back to life." Houston therapist Mary Jo Rapini had just such an experience in 2003 when she suffered a brain aneurysm at the gym. She was in the intensive care unit for three days and then took a turn for the worse when her heart stopped beating. "I remember being in this room with lots of activity and physicians and people doing things on my body, and then I had the experience,'' Rapini told TODAY. "It's a tunnel that's radiant. It's so warm and so accepting, and God held me, and I remember thinking at the time 'I have never known love like this.'''...read more>>>....