Blue Collar Scientist

The Daily Mail reports on the story of a man who received a heart transplant, and later committed suicide by shooting himself - which happens to be the same way the heart donor died.

Archaeoporn covers the story in fine detail, and I’m not going to rehash their material here. But I did notice in the course of my reading that the density of baloney in this story is very high - maybe even degenerate. Let’s count how many unproven concepts and faulty conclusions exist in this story, shall we? Here’s some material from the Daily Mail story:

For a few brave scientists have started claiming that our memories and characters are encoded not just in our brain, but throughout our entire body.

Consciousness, they claim, is created by every living cell in the body acting in concert.

Already we are stepping out into the great land of mystical nonsense: there is an active debate amongst scientists whether consciousness is an illusion or not. So that’s one.

They argue, in effect, that our hearts, livers and every single organ in the body stores our memories, drives our emotions and imbues us with our own individual characters. Our whole body, they believe, is the seat of the soul; not just the brain.

We know the brain exists, but so far there’s been no evidence of a soul. That’s two.

And if any of these organs should be transplanted into another person, parts of these memories - perhaps even elements of the soul - might also be transferred.

So transplanting a liver can transplant memories. Three.

And doing the same thing can transplant elements of the soul. We’ve already dealt with evidence for the existence of a soul, so we can’t use that again, but look how the writer snuck in a new concept here. The soul is made up of “elements,” which presumably have some characteristics by which they can be defined, and these “elements” can move along with a body part.

Four.

There are now more than 70 documented cases similar to Sonny’s, where transplant patients have taken on some of the personality traits of the organ donors.

Five: Attempts to characterize or measure personality have been fraught with very serious and persistent problems. Until the instruments used to measure personality can be developed to the point where they aren’t baloney, any claim that a personality has changed to more closely conform to another personality needs to be pushed back against with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Professor Gary Schwartz and his co-workers at the University of Arizona have documented numerous seemingly inexplicable experiences similar to Sonny’s. And every single one is a direct challenge to the medical status quo.

And six: Just because someone says it, doesn’t make it true. As we shall see, none of the examples listed in any way challenges the medical “status quo.”

And speaking of which, that would be seven: There is no medical status quo. Medicine is science driven, at least when we quite properly exclude homeopaths, alties, and other frauds; and science constantly refines its understanding of how the universe works.

In one celebrated case uncovered by Professor Schwartz’s team, an 18-year-old boy who wrote poetry, played music and composed songs was killed in a car crash. A year after he died, his parents came across a tape of a song he had written, entitled, Danny, My Heart Is Yours.

In his haunting lyrics, the boy sang about how he felt destined to die and donate his heart. After his death, his heart was transplanted into an 18-year-old girl - named Danielle.

When the boy’s parents met Danielle, they played some of his music and she, despite never having heard the song before, knew the words and was able to complete the lyrics.

Eight: Which is more likely: That the 18-year old boy, who apparently wasn’t widely noted as a good lyricist, wrote a song so derivative of the cultural memes in which he and other 18-year olds are immersed that just such an eighteen year old was able to make a passably accurate guess about where the song was going….

Or, could it be that “elements,” which haven’t been shown to exist, of his “soul,” which hasn’t been shown to exist, were “transplanted,” which hasn’t been shown to be possible, along with the organ, and that this led to supernatural knowledge of the song?

Professor Schwartz also investigated the case of a 29-year-old lesbian fast-food junkie who received the heart of a 19-year-old vegetarian woman described as “man crazy”.

After the transplant, she told her friends that meat now made her sick, and that she no longer found women attractive. If fact, shortly after the transplant she married a man.

Nine: Which is more likely? A woman gets a heart transplant and is put under enormous pressure by her doctors to follow dietary rules prior to the transplant and to continue following them after, so as to maximize cardiac health in an already extremely compromised patient. So she does everything she can to mentally adopt these new rules and follow them. She is praised for doing so. The ultimate result is that she comes to prefer her new, healthier diet and to view her old habits with distaste.

Or, could it be that small bits of the inner fairy transmigrated with the heart during transplant, leading to a new set of dietary and sexual preferences?¹

In one equally inexplicable case, a middle-aged man developed a new-found love for classical music after a heart transplant.

It transpired that the 17-year-old donor had loved classical music and played the violin. He had died in a drive-by shooting, clutching a violin to his chest.

That sounds remarkably similar to my coming to appreciate the music of Jimi Hendrix as an adult, even though I had previously preferred classical music. Just for the record, I’ve had no organ transplants and have never been involved in a drive-by shooting.

The correlation breaks down further when you realize that violins are used to make all kinds of different music. Not only classical, but also rock, fusion, easy listening, Swing, jazz, Dixieland, quadrille, Cajun, contra dance, Táncház, Cape Breton, Métis, Clare, Donegal, Sliahbh Luachra, Sligo, Tierra Calliente, Hardanger, etc, etc, etc. When you have such a long list of music genres to choose from, it just doesn’t look very remarkable when the donor played the instrument, and the recipient came to like one of the many genres of music the instrument plays.

So, that’s ten.

Nor are the effects of organ transplants restricted to hearts. Kidneys also seem to carry some of the characteristics of their original owners.

Take the case of Lynda Gammons from Weston, Lincolnshire, who donated one of her kidneys to her husband Ian.

Since the operation, Ian believes he has taken on aspects of his wife’s personality. He has developed a love of baking, shopping, vacuuming and gardening. Prior to the transplant, he loathed all forms of housework with a vengeance.

Unmentioned in this sexist viewpoint is whether Lynda Gammons actually loves baking, shopping, vacuuming, and gardening, or merely does them because they are things that must be done. Three of the four activities are hobbies enjoyed by many - but I don’t know many people with a love of vacuuming. In any case, we should again ask:

It is more probable that a person who experiences a life-threatening illness and undergoes a risky procedure to survive it might mellow a bit and start to do chores they previously abhorred? Particularly if they are now unable to do some of the tasks they previously undertook for the house, such as building additions or crawling under the car to maintain it?

Or do we need to attribute this to small fragments of surgically removed pixie dust which then took root in a new body and changed everything?

I’m counting this one as eleven. And I’ve not bothered going through the whole story.

It’s easy to dismiss such tales as hokum.

Yes, it certainly is. And that is because such stories really are hookum.

1. I’m not going to bother addressing her sexual preferences - she is at liberty to pursue any sexual preference she pleases, without the need for it to be explained by me as a result of stress, or reflection, or other mental processes; and without need for it to be explained by others as a result of spirits from the woods. [↩]

Tags: baloney, Daily Mail, personality, soul, souls, transplants

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 4:06 am and is filed under medicine, skepticism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.