As Southampton doctors claim to have discovered the first scientific proof of life after death, Sam Phillpott meets a man on a quest to find out what happens when we die...

DR SAM Parnia was a medical student in America when he first seriously pondered the question of what happens, and where we go, when we die.

A resuscitation attempt on a patient who had a cardiac arrest proved unsuccessful and left him with unanswered questions.

Now the doctor, who has been based at Southampton General Hospital for the last four years, has published a ground-breaking report which claims for the first time, that there is scientific evidence of life after death.

A team of four, led by Dr Parnia, now a clinical research fellow of medicine, spent a year studying patients resuscitated at the hospital after suffering a heart attack.

The patients brought back to life were all, for varying lengths of time, clinically dead, with no pulse, no respiration and fixed, dilated pupils.

Yet, seven out of the 63 patients who survived recalled emotions and visions while they were "dead".

The patients were interviewed within a week of their cardiac arrest and asked if they remembered anything during their period of unconsciousness.

Seven reported some Near Death Experiences (NDEs), a term given by parapsychologists to stories by people claiming to have journeyed to a world beyond death and who returned to tell the tale.

These NDEs typically occur when someone has suffered a heart attack or is lying on the operating table with surgeons fighting to save them.

When the person is resuscitated he or she recalls, in startling detail, having a glimpse of the afterlife before being "pulled" back to Earth.

Every story is different, but there are strange similarities common to almost all. These generally involve travelling through a tunnel towards a source of bright light, meeting dead loved ones or angelic beings, and undergoing some kind of "life review".

Hard-headed scientists have dismissed such experiences as a brain disorder, caused, for example, by a lack of oxygen or hallucinations triggered off by drugs.

Other possibilities are that it is either wishful thinking on behalf of the patient or that it really did happen.

Dr Parnia will not be pushed into saying whether he believes in life after death but does say: "People who have researched into this subject accept that it happens.

"They just disagree about the cause and significance."

He expands this by saying that it is impossible for one human to say to another that an NDE did not happen - because this cannot be proved.

The 29-year-old doctor who lives at Town Quay, Southampton added: "We know very little about what happens to the human mind at the point of death.

"I wanted to know what happens and whether there is any truth in these claims of NDEs.

"When I was a student in America and a patient died, I wanted to know where he went.

"I think most of us have these questions at some point."

The Southampton researchers were unable to offer a rational and scientific explanation for their results.

None of the patients had been starved of oxygen, which some experts believe may be responsible for NDEs.

Dr Parnia, believes the mind might be independent of the brain and that this is the most exciting factor in his research.

He said: "The brain is definitely needed to manifest the mind, a bit like how a television set can take what essentially are waves in the air and translate them into picture and sound.

"But people don't realise what the mind is. We really don't know, it's a whole new area of science opening up."

The researchers were so intrigued by what they discovered that they have now set up a new charity, the Horizon Research Foundation, to fund more studies into near-death experiences.

The foundation also aims to be an educational resource for both professionals and people who have had or want to find out more about end of life experiences and issues.

These NDEs are said to be becoming more common, largely due to advances in medical science which make it more likely for people to be rescued from the brink of death.

Dr Parnia needs £140,000 to fund the next phase of research which will hopefully take place in 25 hospitals in the South possibly in six months time.

He concluded: "This is uncharted territory, and we are just beginning to move along the boundaries.

"There is something here which needs to be explored which will have implications for everybody."

* Horizon Research Foundation can be contacted via mailpoint 888, Southampton General Hospital, SO16 6YD.