3 ms·
> I have spent a lot of time since my wife’s death trying to make sense of this paradox. In the high-tech, evidence-driven world of contemporary medicine, it wa
by gspencley 4y ago
> I have spent a lot of time since my wife’s death trying to make sense of this paradox. In the high-tech, evidence-driven world of contemporary medicine, it was a dream that led a physician to conclude that my wife was dying. How was that possible?
Here's a sobering hypothesis: it is not unheard of for nurses and physicians to be murderers and to target their patients. I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but this claim is choosing to trust a physician who is alleging that patient-reported dreams are a predictor of death.
I call bullshit.
My wife has been helping her father care for her 104 year-old grandfather. He lost his wife, my wife's grandmother, several years ago. He has dreams and hallucinations about his late wife on a routine basis ... and we're starting to think he's never going to pass.
So if my doctor told me that my wife has less than 24 hours to live, based a dream that she reported, and then it actually happened... I think I would demand an autopsy to confirm it was the cancer. Could have been coincidence, maybe the physician was telling the truth ... but call me skeptical.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
- superb-owl 4y agoDid you read the article? Kerr has published several papers with data supporting his hypothesis. Your single anecdote doesn't invalidate a statistical pattern.
- gspencley 4y agoNo. I stopped at the quote and commented, also noticing the "religion" link in the header of the website so started to think that this was some woo woo pseudo-science nonsense. Thanks for the additional information. But also, on that note, I comment to socialize and share my opinions and thoughts. I'm not interested in using an online forum to engage in serious academic study and statistical analysis nor am I going to not take what I read in an "article" with more than one grain of salt. RTFM? Are you for real ? ... :P
- joenot443 4y agoThe word “religion” alone is enough to make you stop reading an otherwise excellent and secular article? It’s funny to remark about pseudoscience when one single word is enough for you to stick your head in the sand and yell about zealots. That’s not really the kind of behavior I’d expect from a self-described scientific thinker :)
- selfmodruntime 4y agoYou missed the part where the patient was in hospice, with terminal cancer.