"The Unstoppable Schwartz"

[Mojo]

Hi Mojo,

I've just obtained my proof.

ChristineR
People who undergo organ transplants obviously go through dramatic personality changes.

No you haven't. Your claim was that reports of people who have received transplants of organs inheriting character traits from the donor are very common.

1) You have presented a single isolated statement. This does not demonstrate that statements such as the one you have quoted are common.

2) The statement you have quoted says that people who undergo organ transplants go through dramatic personality changes. this is not the same as saying that they inherit character traits from the donor.

Try again.

 

[kieran]

Are you maintaining that it is uncommon for organ recipients to claim that their personalities and abilities have been so influenced? If so where are you getting your information from?

If you are correct and it is indeed uncommon, then I agree that there's probably nothing to it. But I was under the impression that it is common.

As we all know, "common" does not mean correct. Obvious examples include (i) the world being flat and (ii) the earth being the center of the Universe - both have been "commonly" held to be true in the past, both are now known to be untrue.

So what would "common" mean here ... I think you mean that there is lots of here-say - please correct me if this an incorrect assumption. So what is wrong with asking if there have been any simple studies to see if there is actually such a phenomenon or just the perception of such a phenomenon?

I am sure that people's lives are changed by having transplants - usually for the better. They have the health and energy (vitality?) to do things that their previous conditions prevented them from doing. [sarcasm]They may take up a new-hobby such as hill-walking - oh the shock if it turns out that their doner enjoyed *walking* their dog - obviously a characteristic passed on through the organ! [/sarcasm]

 

[Interesting Ian]

The onus is on you to prove that a person who receives a donated organ could become imbued with any personality characteristics or abilities of the donor.

Why is it? If someone says it is impossible then it is scarcely a justification of their position to ask me to show that it is possible. It's shifting the burden of proof.

And by no means do I claim that it is either possible, or could be possible. I have no idea. But I'm open to the idea, meaning that at the moment I cannot say it could not happen. However if you have some knowledge or reasoning which shows that it is impossible then please enlighten me.

 

[Darat]

You're trying to shift the burden of proof so as to force me to try to prove a negative here.

Where are you getting your information from? I have not seen reports of this phenomenon. You have claimed that "reports of this phenomenon seem to be very common indeed". I have asked you to provide evidence to back up your assertion, in the forms of links to or citations for these reports, but you have declined to do this.

I believe this documentary may provide some evidence to support this belief.

 

[drfrank]

Come on, in the example given the guy was doing art therapy hours a day in order to relieve the boredom, and it's not like he suddenly became Van Gogh.

The claim of "amazing, elaborate artwork" by his art therapist is more than a little exaggerated lol

Yes, organ transplants are hugely life-changing things, as they undoubtedly make you much more aware of your own mortality. This naturally makes you want to strive to accomplish more, whether it's be a better husband (by going shopping with your wife) or becoming a climber (as you're afraid of heights).

Got any anecdotes of anyone losing a talent after a transplant, such as someone who lost their artistic ability after a kidney transplant? That, to me, would be much more convincing evidence.

That said, I think there is some sensible possibilities where a trait could apparently be passed from donor to recipient. For example, a donated pancreas with over-average insulin production may seemingly transfer an appetite for `sweet' things over to the recipient, as they'll get used to eating more to keep their blood sugar up. Of course, I can't back this hypothesis up with any examples, but at least it's in the realms of science

 

[CFLarsen]

Why is it? If someone says it is impossible then it is scarcely a justification of their position to ask me to show that it is possible. It's shifting the burden of proof.

And by no means do I claim that it is either possible, or could be possible. I have no idea. But I'm open to the idea, meaning that at the moment I cannot say it could not happen. However if you have some knowledge or reasoning which shows that it is impossible then please enlighten me.

Ian, you know better than that.

You are making an extraordinary claim. You back it up with evidence.

 

[ChristineR]

No you haven't. Your claim was that reports of people who have received transplants of organs inheriting character traits from the donor are very common.

1) You have presented a single isolated statement. This does not demonstrate that statements such as the one you have quoted are common.

2) The statement you have quoted says that people who undergo organ transplants go through dramatic personality changes. this is not the same as saying that they inherit character traits from the donor.

Try again.

Besides, I'm an idiot. I know this because Ian doesn't call people idiots for making sensible, logical, defensible statements he happens to disagree with.

Anyhow, I concede that stories of people undergoing personality changes after organ donation are common, and far from surprising. I also concede that there are many donees who have stated that they feel some sort of connection to the donor.

I do not concede that any of this is caused by cellular memory.

 

[ChristineR]

I scarcely think that the change in testestorone levels would make me prefer a certain food, or precipitate a desire to go shopping all the time.

Hmm...when I recovered from a serious illness, I started shopping. I hadn't brought clothes in a long time--I didn't have much use for nice clothes before. I also all but stopped eating, although that was an indirect result--a lot of complicated things happened right after getting well.

 

[Interesting Ian]

or...

Lamarckian-like environmental influences can be encoded on a cellular level through a means as yet undetected.

Why is that unlikely?

We would need great reasons to even consider the latter, of which we currently have none.

We haven't got none at all. We have the claims of these recipients of organ donors. And we also have epigenetics.

 

[Tirdun]

I'll throw in my 2cents. Any experience which drastically alters your life for months or years is bound to cause shifts in priority, interests, desire and feelings. Add in the drugs, stress and loss of control over personal and professional life and you have a catalyst for change.

Here's the experimental process, find the troublesome bits:
1- Quantify the person before the event as a baseline
2- Quantify the person afterwards.
3- Calculate the delta of every emotion, interest and motivation.
4- Isolate causes for these deltas and compare to a control person.

See the trouble here? None of these are even remotely possible. People's interests and desires and emotions are rarely measurable, poorly remembered and impossible to isolate. Combine this with a traumatic experience and all objectivity is lost.

It is therefore completely reasonable to dismiss fuzzy claims about transferring these intangibles from person to person through a process which, as far as we are able to detect, has no means of carrying this information nor a mechanism to transfer that from the organ to the new owner. It would be like me claiming to be able to send someone a ham sandwich through their TV set. Does that make it impossible? No, but when the evidence consists entirely of emotions and feelings from people in highly emotional situations, you start to become skeptical.

As with the ham sandwich, proper research could certainly change the mind of the skeptic, but until some mechanism for transferring that sandwich is isolated and demonstrated, the whole idea will be scoffed at.

 

[Genesius]

From just my general reading mainly. I keep hearing about it.

I say seem to be common because I keep coming across it all the time. But I did say seems rather than is common.

But the impression I get is that it is common. Does anyone know how common or uncommon this phenomenon is?

What about donated blood.

BTW I'm not trying to wind people up by starting this thread. I'm genuinely fascinated by it if it should transpire that this phenomenon is for real. It has all sorts of implications.

It would be a help if you could tell us what constitutes your "general reading." The source of the reports would add or subtract from the likelihood of there being any substance to these stories - for example, an article in The New England Journal of Medicine would carry quite a bit more weight than an article in the Weekly World News.

 

[kitakaze]

After Ian calls you an idiot for no good reason except that you disagreed with him you may feel differently. Certainly Lothian seems to.

If such was the case I could see Lothian's feeling as being understandable but still would hope that petty insults wouldn't be engaged in kind.

You're a liar. I would never call someone an idiot simply because they disagreed with me. I call them idiots because I think they are (not literally an idiot of course, but rather someone who is not particularly bright).

Sorry, I don't want to derail this into a matter of who's doing the name calling as this is a very interesting discussion. However, I will say that whether I agreed with them or not, I've enjoyed reading some of Ian's posts in the past. That said, Ian you seem quick to call people liars and idiots which, in my opinion, makes you a little less interesting. Just an observation, I may be wrong.

 

[Interesting Ian]

The reason we doubt the idea that implanted organs transfer traits of the donor is that no known mechanism exists for this.

Precisely! And for no other reason.

As mentioned, receiving a donor organ is usually accompanied with profound changes for the patient, both physically and psychologically, and in the cases where the donor IS known, it is not unlikely that some of those changes might be interpreted as being traits of the donor.

But an individual is not suddenly going to acquire a desire to go shopping, or a desire for certain types of food which previously was wholly lacking in the individual concerned. It seems this hypothesis is unreasonable for some of these experiences that organ recipients have related.

 

[Lothian]

Where have I called Lothian an idiot?

Idiot – I am not sure. There are 103 search hits on you posting ‘idiot’ at someone and I am not trailing through them all. You called me Stupid and a Scumbag here.

You have a history of calling people idiots See here

 

[athon]

Why is that unlikely?

I assume you read my post and are not being intentionally obtuse?

It's unlikely because there is already a reason to describe the observations people have made. It is supported by the evidence and requires no extra evidence to support it, unlike the 'cellular memory' hypothesis.

We haven't got none at all. We have the claims of these recipients of organ donors. And we also have epigenetics.

1) The claims are observations of a behaviour which can already be explained easily. You have given no reason why the behaviour observed cannot be explained as we've already described, nor provided additional evidence for the cellular memory theory.

2) Epigenetics? Three things; firstly, explain firstly how the transferred DNA would be expressed in a fashion that could alter personality. Secondly, this is not cellular memory, as the phenomena is a description of the transfer of particular personality traits of a person, which is as much (if not more) environmental. Thirdly, this claim would require evidence of functioning. Which, if you are suggesting it, you must surely have.

Athon

 

[slabsides]

As a new reader and poster, this is one of the first threads that I've read through carefully. I'm impressed, first by how the discussion seems to devote itself as much the rules of rhetoric as to the subject itself.
On subject, I've recently read a light little novel entitled Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith, which has cellular memory as an important plot element. The characters (and presumably the writer) concluded that the traumatic experience of receiving a transplant can be the cause of the sometimes intense delusions and character alterations we call 'cellular memory'.
It's easy to understand how these internal disturbances can be laid to 'cellular memory' by persons struggling to rationalize their subjective responses to such a recent development in medicine as whole organ transplants.
It's easy to see how one can make the intellectual leap to a conviction that the 'new part of me' is a psychic as well as a physical addition to my Self. And self-delusion does the rest.
I ponder the fact that yesterday I ate a delicious beef hamburger, which is now presumably thoroughly 'incorporated' into my slab sides; yet I feel no impulse to low, graze, or pursue that cute heifer in the field.
But...I'm also constrained to remark that transplanted kidneys remember how to secret urine, corneas to see, hearts to beat, and livers to errr......live. So in a sense, cell memory IS an undeniable fact. But memory resides in the brain, if we are to believe neurological dogma, and the notion that the heart remembers love, or the eyes the image of one's murderer: notions common in romantic literature, are archaic superstitions. Anyone for a slice of Einstein's brain?

 

[Interesting Ian]

II

I scarcely think that the change in testestorone levels would make me prefer a certain food, or precipitate a desire to go shopping all the time.



athon
No offence, mate, but you know this how, exactly?

I think this because I have a complete loathing for shopping or, say, the taste of kidney. Testosterone levels can alter due to weight lifting and the like. It would seem incredibly strange to suppose that exercising would make me desire to engage in mind numbingly boring activities.

Hormones play a very complex role in the body's communication system, and changing their levels can often produce effects that are hard to predict. Modifying testosterone levels could have a wide variety of effects.

They couldn't make me want to go shopping.

 

[Hindmost]

Actually, this should be easy to gather data and do a reasonable test. Receiving an organ from someone with significantly different abilities than the donor would provide needed data.

Examples: Recipient--can't do simple math even with a calculator...
Donor: Professor of math. Laughs at the ease of paritial differential equations.

After the transplanted organ takes "root," does the recipient have the ability to do calculus. I would doubt it. But this could be a research project. (for someone with no life, but a research project)

If it did work, we all could exchange a few cells here and there and learn languages really quickly. I would love to learn Mandarin and Cantonese. (including the calligraphy).

glenn

 

[kitakaze]

As a new reader and poster, this is one of the first threads that I've read through carefully. I'm impressed, first by how the discussion seems to devote itself as much the rules of rhetoric as to the subject itself.
On subject, I've recently read a light little novel entitled Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith, which has cellular memory as an important plot element. The characters (and presumably the writer) concluded that the traumatic experience of receiving a transplant can be the cause of the sometimes intense delusions and character alterations we call 'cellular memory'.
It's easy to understand how these internal disturbances can be laid to 'cellular memory' by persons struggling to rationalize their subjective responses to such a recent development in medicine as whole organ transplants.
It's easy to see how one can make the intellectual leap to a conviction that the 'new part of me' is a psychic as well as a physical addition to my Self. And self-delusion does the rest.
I ponder the fact that yesterday I ate a delicious beef hamburger, which is now presumably thoroughly 'incorporated' into my slab sides; yet I feel no impulse to low, graze, or pursue that cute heifer in the field.
But...I'm also constrained to remark that transplanted kidneys remember how to secret urine, corneas to see, hearts to beat, and livers to errr......live. So in a sense, cell memory IS an undeniable fact. But memory resides in the brain, if we are to believe neurological dogma, and the notion that the heart remembers love, or the eyes the image of one's murderer: notions common in romantic literature, are archaic superstitions. Anyone for a slice of Einstein's brain?

From one newbie to another, welcome. Lot's to learn here. (psst... can newbies do that?)

 

[Interesting Ian]

No you haven't. Your claim was that reports of people who have received transplants of organs inheriting character traits from the donor are very common.

I said no such thing. I said that they seem common.

1) You have presented a single isolated statement. This does not demonstrate that statements such as the one you have quoted are common.

What statement?

2) The statement you have quoted says that people who undergo organ transplants go through dramatic personality changes. this is not the same as saying that they inherit character traits from the donor.

Try again.

I haven't quoted any statement. I haven't said that people inherit character traits from their donors.

I started this thread because I wanted to know if Mr Randi's position that reported instances of organ recipients being imbued with character traits and skills from the donor is utterly absurd, is justified.

Nothing that has been said so far (that I've read) has justified Mr Randi's stance on this issue.

Instead people are going off on a tangent and asking me to prove something which I have no opinions on and have not said I believed. Even if there is absolutely nothing whatsoever to these stories, and they are not even common, this does not justify Mr Randi's position one iota.