When Bettina Peyton was a child, her father told her there was nothing after death, “and I became an atheist on the spot.”
This worldview was only affirmed through her course of life, where Peyton pursued medical sciences.
“As a physician, I was taught ‘death is the enemy, to be fought at all costs,’” Peyton, a retired neurologist, said at an International Association for Near-Death Studies conference.
Yet for numerous patients coming into the hospital needing resuscitation, it was a battle their medical teams would not win. Average rates of success for resuscitation attempts are lower than many might think: between 5 to 10 percent on average, and up to 20 percent in hospitals. And in the 1980s, this was even lower, Peyton said. Almost all those patients did not leave the hospital alive….