Some times news is dramatic, few of them are actually touching. Currently on the way to becoming an ardent follower of James Randi (www.randi.org), (And I’ll personally track you down and kill you with my collection of short stories if I hear you making fun of this website name )I feel embarrassed to be “feeling” something when I read the articles below, but I guess it’s ok as long as they are not godmen cheating anyone, I can pamper my feelings a little.
The following two true stories are about heart transplant patients who get in touch with the donor’s family and go through a plethora of emotions that can hardly be described accurately. The first story (link) is about how the receiver kills himself exactly the same way as his donor did, he was also married to his dead donor’s wife for a while. While the death is sad and the reasons for suicide probably explainable, it leads us to the second story, which is in fact an extract from a book. A woman receiving a teenage guy’s heart develops sudden cravings for beer and chicken nuggets -something that was new after her own transplant, and later as she finds out, were some of the traits of her organ donor. And since there are terms of use from the Associated press which forbid reproduction of any content, I present you the link here.
While I definitely do not mean to indicate that it happens for every organ transplant or even a considerable majority, reading two such articles in less than 24 hrs of time prompted me to share this information.
In a study by Morgan et al, from Purdue University titled “Entertainment (Mis)Education: The framing of Organ donation in Entertainment Television” the authors write as follows:
“For example, several shows including Ghost Whisperer, Spin City, The Simpsons, All My Children, and Killer Instinct feature storylines where a dead donor’s characteristics change the personality traits of the recipients. Sometimes the spiritual change has a positive valence: Vicki on One Life to Live becomes “one heart” with her dead husband; a woman falls in love with her dead husband’s heart recipient because he becomes so much like him. On the other hand, on The Simpsons and Killer Instinct, transplant recipients turn into murderers because their donors were serial killers.”
There’s also a proper scientific name for this (unproved) phenomenon: Cellular memory phenomenon. It appears like a spin off of our genes and DNA structure that we inherit from our parents and ancestors. But they (blood relatives) are related by our DNA patterns, how then can we explain something like this from an unrelated donor? That to long after we have formed our own personality traits. A point to ponder.
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