- 16 - One eventually decided to “murder” plants. One of Backster’s co-worker - none of the other participants knew who had been selected - was chosen to destroy a second philodendron in front of the other philodendron. All the participants then entered the room where the “murder” had taken place and where the surviving philodendron stood. • The moment the plant murderer entered the lie detector moved fiercely. - The survivor accused the murderer. The so-called Backster-Effect was born. Various institutes and scientists, amongst them the American physicist Marcel J. Vogel, have verified the Backster experiments and come up with their own experiment arrangements. 1. 10 When is a human being dead? In July 1924, the German Neuropsychologist Hans Berger succeeded with an experiment that turned out to be ground-breaking for the exploration of the brain. Berger had attached two electrodes to the scalp of a mentally ill patient and connected them to an instrument that can register weak electrical impulses. Neither the scull nor the scalp was damaged in any way - he did not establish a direct connection to the brain. But in spite of this, the pointer of the instrument began to move the moment the electrodes touched the head. Hans Berger had discovered brainwaves. In 1929, Berger published the first image created by the identity of a person: An Electroencephalogram (ECG). When one was still dealing with thought molecules and arousal impulses, one constantly talked about a thought molecule and an impulse that was followed by other, individual impulses. This was of course just a simplified way of looking at things. The reality is that the brain could perform precious little if it was to always send one impulse after another (in series). One knows these days that the whole brain must perform the same function a million times over simultaneously (parallel) in an infinite number of cells and that it is therefore pulsed through by arousal patterns on a continuous basis. Only a few years ago, brainwaves and electroencephalograms were concepts that belonged in neurological clinics and the public in general showed very little interest in. This only changed when Dr. Christian Bernard transplanted the first human heart in December 1967. This was the first time public opinion had to deal with the question, when are human beings actually dead? The heart of a corpse is useless for transplantation because its circulation has come to a standstill. But on the other hand, one cannot simply rip the donor’s heart from the living body! Apparatuses that provide artificial respiration for the donor or - in an extreme case - a heart-lung machine, help deal with this dilemma. These apparatuses can bridge the abyss between “no longer alive” and not yet dead”. The blood of the spender whose life is beyond saving, is supplied with oxygen with the help of a machine. The heart recipient receives a vital, living organ.
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