Proof of Heaven (Alexander)

Author Bio
• Birth—December, 1953
• Where—Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., University of North Carolina-Chapel
   Hill; M.D., Duke University
• Currently—lives in Lynchburg, Virginia


Eben Alexander, III, is an American neurosurgeon and the author of the best-selling Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, in which he describes his 2008 near-death experience and asserts that science can and will determine that heaven really does exist.

Education and training
Alexander attended Phillips Exeter Academy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (A.B., 1975), and the Duke University School of Medicine (M.D., 1980).

Alexander was an Intern in General Surgery at Duke University Medical Center, a resident at Duke, Newcastle (U.K.) General Hospital. He was a resident and research fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital and is certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery and the American College of Surgeons (F.A.C.S.).

Academic and clinical appointments
Alexander has taught at Duke University Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, University of Massachusetts Medical School, and the University of Virginia Medical School.

He has had hospital appointments at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Massachusetts Medical Center, and Lynchburg (Virginia) General Hospital-CentraHealth. He is currently an attending neurosurgeon.

Professional activities
Alexander is a member of the American Medical Association and various other professional societies. He has been on the editorial boards of various journals.

Proof of Heaven
Alexander is the author of the autobiographical book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife (2012) in which he asserts that his out of body and near death experience (NDE) while in a meningitis-induced coma in 2008 proves that consciousness is independent of the brain, that death is an illusion, and that an eternity of perfect splendor awaits us beyond the grave—complete with angels, clouds, and departed relatives, but also including butterflies and a beautiful girl in peasant dress who Alexander finds out later was his departed sister.

The current understanding of the mind, according to Alexander, “now lies broken at our feet”:

What happened to me destroyed it, and I intend to spend the rest of my life investigating the true nature of consciousness and making the fact that we are more, much more, than our physical brains as clear as I can, both to my fellow scientists and to people at large.

Alexander’s book was excerpted in a Newsweek magazine cover story in October 2012. (In May 2012, Alexander had provided a slightly more technical account of the events described in his book in an article, "My Experience in Coma," in AANS Neurosurgeon, the trade publication of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.)

Proof of Heaven has been on the New York Times Best Seller list since its release in October, 2012.

Criticism
In a wide-ranging investigation of Alexander's story and medical background, Esquire magazine reported (August 2013 issue) that prior to the publication of Proof of Heaven, Alexander had been terminated or suspended from multiple hospital positions, and had been the subject of several malpractice lawsuits, including at least two involving the alteration of medical records to cover up a medical error.

The magazine also found what it claimed were discrepancies with regard to Alexander's version of events in the book. Among the discrepancies, according to an account of the Esquire article in Forbes, was that...

Alexander writes that he slipped into the coma as a result of severe bacterial meningitis and had no higher brain activity, while a doctor who cared for him says the coma was medically induced and the patient was conscious, though hallucinating.

Alexander issued a statement after the Esquire article's publication:

I wrote a truthful account of my experiences in Proof of Heaven and have acknowledged in the book both my professional and personal accomplishments and my setbacks. I stand by every word in this book and have made its message the purpose of my life. Esquire's cynical article distorts the facts of my 25-year career as a neurosurgeon and is a textbook example of how unsupported assertions and cherry-picked information can be assembled at the expense of the truth.

Alexander’s book and publicity campaign have been criticized by scientists, including neuroscientist Sam Harris, who described Alexander’s NDE account (chronicled in Newsweek, October 2012) as "alarmingly unscientific," and that...

everything—absolutely everything—in Alexander’s account rests on repeated assertions that his visions of heaven occurred while his cerebral cortex was "shut down," "inactivated," "completely shut down," "totally offline," and "stunned to complete inactivity." The evidence he provides for this claim is not only inadequate—it suggests that he doesn’t know anything about the relevant brain science.... Even in cases where the brain is alleged to have shut down, its activity must return if the subject is to survive and describe the experience. In such cases, there is generally no way to establish that the NDE occurred while the brain was offline.

Neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks agreed with Harris, saying that...

to deny the possibility of any natural explanation for an NDE, as Dr. Alexander does, is more than unscientific—it is antiscientific.... The one most plausible hypothesis in Dr. Alexander's case...is that his NDE occurred not during his coma, but as he was surfacing from the coma and his cortex was returning to full function. It is curious that he does not allow this obvious and natural explanation, but instead insists on a supernatural one.

In November 2012, Alexander responded to critics in a second Newsweek article:

My synapses—the spaces between the neurons of the brain that support the electrochemical activity that makes the brain function—were not simply compromised during my experience. They were stopped. Only isolated pockets of deep cortical neurons were still sputtering, but no broad networks capable of generating anything like what we call "consciousness." The E. coli bacteria that flooded my brain during my illness made sure of that. My doctors have told me that according to all the brain tests they were doing, there was no way that any of the functions including vision, hearing, emotion, memory, language, or logic could possibly have been intact.

(Author bio from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/04/2013.)