Posted on 03/17/2008 8:48:13 AM PDT by BGHater
A woman claims to have undergone a complete "personality transplant" after receiving a new kidney.
Cheryl Johnson, 37, says she has changed completely since receiving the organ in May. She believes that she must have picked up her new characteristics from the donor, a 59-year-old man who died from an aneurysm.
Now, not only has her personality changed, the single mother also claims that her tastes in literature have taken a dramatic turn. Whereas she only used to read low-brow novels, Dostoevsky has become her author of choice since the transplant.
Miss Johnson, from Penwortham, in Preston, Lancs, said: "You pick up your characteristics from your donor. My son said when I first had the transplant, I went stroppy and snappy - that wasn't me.
"I have always loved books but I've started to read classics like Jane Austen and Dostoevsky. I found myself reading Persuasion."
The former Preston North End football steward's life has been turned round since her successful operation. After developing kidney problems in 1998, she had previously undergone every available form of dialysis as well as a failed transplant in 2001.
Miss Johnson added: "It's given my 16-year-old boy his mum back.
"I totally respect the family who gave me this kidney. They have given me the best thing they can - a chance for a normal life. I am forever grateful to them."
Academics in America have developed a theory called cellular memory phenomenon to explain the personality changes that are allegedly experienced by some transplant recipients.
Examples include a Massachusetts woman with vertigo who became a climber; a Milwaukee lawyer who began eating Snickers, having always hated chocolate; and a seven-year-old girl who had nightmares about being killed after being given the heart of a murdered child.
However, the only case recognised by the scientific community is that of a 15-year-old Australian girl whose blood type changed following a liver transplant.
UK Transplant also remains sceptical about the phenomenon. A spokesman said: "While not discarding it entirely, we have no reason to believe that it happens. We would be interested to see any definitive evidence that supports it."
Aw jeez.
That happened to me when they put in a new liver....hic
Well, she probably has a much better quality of life now, so I am not surprised that her tastes might have changed.
There are documented incidents of people assuming the blood group of the donor, after certain transplants. It was posted here on FR itself.
Yes, bone marrow — which makes blood.
Bingo.
Drink more fluids, that will wash Jane Austen out eventually.
This does not fit the dominant model of consciousness, yet it is also not uncommon for such effects to be reported.
H’mmm, perhaps an attachee came with the transplant.
I saw this in a movie where a man got a replacement hand from a killer. Classic.
Yer Father’s run off again??? NOICE!!!
This person has to be on drugs to keep her body from rejecting the kidney. The tone of the article suggests she blames the kidney. I suggest it is the drugs.
Personality linked to organs and following the organs into a new person is every bit as real as interstellar wormhole traveling space monsters, telekinesis, and government mind rays. It all exists in the world of coast to coast AM. And that’s the only place it exists.
I want Ted Kennedy's liver when he is done with it. No, not to be transplanted. I just figure that it is so hard it would be great for making armor piercing rounds of ammo.
Now she has an uncontrollable urge to scratch herself and burp. And her perfect night out is dinner at the Golden Corral and a couple of hours at the Bass Pro Shop.
I woke up in a Vegas bath tub a few years ago to find someone had stolen one of my kidneys. I’ve never had an urge to gamble since...........
Any film that somehow manages to show Jacqueline Bisset nude hardly deserves the moniker "bad".....
Science cannot accomodate this sort of "model," but the soul is in the blood, according to the Bible and Torah, with soul being the conscious self, separate from spirit.
Science can even if the current crop of scientists and philosophers don't see how. Also, the Bible and Torah are being misread every day as we see in the Rev Wright apologies.
Yeah but, it has Alan Alda in it...
“Any film that somehow manages to show Jacqueline Bisset nude hardly deserves the moniker “bad”.....
Yeah but, it has Alan Alda in it...”
And that’s how you know life’s unfair. When Alan Alda gets to lay in the same bed next to a nude Jaqueline Bisset.
This article would have slightly more credibility if they provided ANY evidence that the donor actually read those books, or had that personality.
Yep, he sure does look like a Dostoevsky kinda guy.
Point taken
;-)
And where is our Rose? Oh yea, after the Vicar.
She got her health back. She didn’t pick up any characteristics of the donor. Strong imagination. Next they’ll be suing the donor for making them suddenly lose interest in knitting.
“Personality linked to organs...”
Did the article claim that the personality traits were the same as the donor? Or did it say the personality changed? Taking this at face value, is it not possible that a change in blood chemistry and hormones post transplant could alter a personality? Isn’t it also true that what people call a gut feeling may refer to the large number of nerves in the stomach. Perhaps personality is a collection of traits which are created from the “mind” - (what the brain does)and is influenced by the stimulus of certain organs: Skin, eyes, liver, etc...
I beg to differ. There is at least one more place where interstellar wormhole, telekinetic, government mind ray controlled space monsters exist. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors. :>)
I LOVE Onslow. I am married to his American counterpart in the southern US.
does she pee standing up?
If a brain were successfully transplanted, the personality traits would follow it to the new body. With a kidney, no. The article implies that the people believe that the personality came with the organ, though. The people are only experiencing this “phenomenon” because they believe they are experiencing it.
Hmmm, sounds like an interesting movie.
I think often about that flick with Michael Caine, and his crawling hand. I think that was the name of it, The Crawling Hand. It was a bad movie, and a good one at the same time. Lots of jumping out of your skin moments when the dismemebered hand would leap out of nowhere and choke somebody to death. At the end, you weren’t sure if he was delusional and hallucinating what we were seeing, or if this hand was really ambulatory on it’s own. CREEEEEPY
There was some one on TV who got a kidney from a young guy. I think he was late teens. The recipient was a middle aged woman. All of a sudden she CRAVED chicken nuggets from McD. She had never liked them before. She found out it was the donor’s favorite! Maybe our personality isn’t JUST in our brain.
“”The Australian ABC News is reporting that a 15-year-old Australian liver
transplant patient has defied modern medicine by taking on her donor’s
immune system. Demi-Lee Brennan had a liver transplant. Nine months later,
doctors at Sydney’s Westmead Children’s Hospital were amazed to find the
teenager’s blood group had changed to the donor’s blood type. They were even
more surprised when they found the girl’s immune system had almost totally
been replaced by that of the donor, meaning she no longer had to take
anti-rejection drugs. ‘Dr. Michael Stormon says his team is now trying to
identify how the phenomenon happened and whether it can be replicated.”
You probably know the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ abhorrence of donating blood, or
receiving someone else’s blood for that matter. There seems to be a very
intimate connection between a person’s “I” (re Steiner) and his or her
blood. A contract signed with your own blood is necessary to sign a pact
with the devil (according to magic tradition).
It may be hard to imagine, but what has happened in the case of this liver
transplant would make one think of the person’s “I” having been replaced
with the donor’s “I”. Could such a thing be possible ? Could the donor’s “I”
have supplanted the receiver’s “I” via his own liver ? This is not a joke,
if you are wondering.
It might be an interesting study to compare who likes this but not Bird Flu or Peak Oil, or any of the great number of other marginal subjects.
Yeah, well...I want to apologize for that. It wasn't really my fault - I woke up in a Hong Kong hotel in a tub of ice with one of my livers missing.
Well anyone on this thread must have been interested if they clicked on to it to read it. I have seen these people on TV and read articles about their craving new foods after the transplant, and then finding out it was the donor’s favorite food. Maybe we are more than just our thoughts in our brains. Maybe our conscious self is in our whole body, and not just in part of the brain. They used to think it was in the heart. Maybe there is much more to the human body than we will ever know. I find it fascinating.
That was a good one!
Of course. But there are hundreds of these topics and some like these and not those. A matrix might yield some useful information.
this was an episode of Mission: Impossible
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