Little Girl Who Received a Heart Transplant Solved Her Donor’s Murder?

Claim:

An 8-year-old girl who received a heart transplant was able to solve her donor’s murder after having nightmares about the crime.

Evaluation:

context

Currently, this claim is based solely on hearsay and speculation. To find out the source of the rumor, Snopes contacted the administrators of a website for the late Paul Pearsall, Ph.D., whose book “The Heart’s Code: Tapping the Wisdom and Power of Our Heart Energy” appeared to be the origin of the rumor claim. However, in his book, Pearsall did not mention the name of the little girl or the name of the person from whom he heard the story secondhand.

A claim has been circulating online for years that an 8-year-old girl who received a heart transplant from a murdered 10-year-old girl helped police catch her donor’s killer after having nightmares about the crime.

In October 2022, a YouTube A video about a theoretical phenomenon known as cellular memory told about this Story.

A user made a comment about this Video, proverb: “I believe that consciousness exists in every cell of our body. I also believe that if this is a real story, it is essentially a form of quantum entanglement.”

The DEAD talks The podcast also had a guest who echoed this claim in a 2023 episode, prompting one person to do so comment: “I completely believe that. I know non-smokers who started smoking after an organ transplant. Come and find out by talking to the family of the deceased donor that the person was a former smoker.”

The claim also appeared on the Unsolved Mysteries subreddit. in October 2019. However, a user who was not entirely convinced, replied: “Urban Legend. This would be huge if it actually happened. I can’t imagine a grand jury indicting anyone based on evidence like that.”

Cellular memory theory

A post from Boston University in 2014 The Nerve Blog explains the theory of cellular memory as follows: “Memories as well as personality traits are not only stored in the brain, but can also be stored in organs such as the heart.”

A Abstract A 2024 study called “Beyond the Pump: A Narrative Study Exploring Heart Memory” goes into more detail about how this might happen work and the need for further research to actually find evidence of this.

Studies suggest that heart transplant recipients may have preferences, emotions and memories similar to those of donors, suggesting a form of memory storage within the transplanted organ. Mechanisms proposed for this memory transfer include cellular memory, epigenetic modifications, and energetic interactions. Further interdisciplinary research is needed to decipher the intricacies of memory transmission, neuroplasticity, and organ integration, and to provide insights into both organ transplantation and broader aspects of neuroscience and human identity.

The purpose of this fact check is not to prove whether cellular memory is authentic or not, so we have only provided this for context.

Was the little girl’s case real?

The post from The Nerve Blog detailed the claim about the 8-year-old girl. However, there is no evidence that the case was authentic, and no credible news organization has reported to this alleged story. The Nerve blog post too completed: “There is no clear scientific evidence on the process of cellular memories.”

The claim that a child who received a heart transplant could help catch her donor’s killer seemed to come from a 1998 book by Paul Pearsall, Ph.D., about cellular memory, “The Heart’s Code.” : Tapping the Wisdom and Power of Our Heart Energy”. ,”

Accordingly Pearsall’s websiteThe book “presents scientific evidence that the heart literally thinks, remembers, communicates with the brain about its own unique feelings, and connects with other hearts. “It provides evidence of cellular memory and that some heart transplant recipients report retaining memories and personality traits of their donor.”

In it, Pearsall recalls an anecdote that was supposedly told to him on an unspecified date at a conference of “psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers.” Houston, in which a psychiatrist tearfully told the story:

Sobbing so hard that the audience and I had difficulty hearing her, she said, “I have a patient, an eight-year-old little girl, who received the heart of a murdered ten-year-old girl. Her mother made her do it.” When she started screaming at night about the man who murdered her donor, I just couldn’t deny the reality of what this child was telling me. I finally decided to call the police and used the den According to the little girl’s descriptions, they were able to easily convict the murderer with the evidence my patient provided: the time, the weapon, the location, the clothes he was wearing, what the little girl he killed said to him had…everything the little heart desired The information of the transplant recipient were completely correct.”

(“The Code of the Heart: Harnessing the Wisdom and Power of Our Heart Energy” by Paul Pearsall, Ph.D.)

The details of this story match the claim that has been circulating online, and Pearsall often does mentioned In Comments discuss it.

However, there is no evidence to support Origin of the claim or its validity. Pearsall did not mention the 8-year-old girl’s name or the name of the psychiatrist who tearfully told the story to him and the audience. Without this information, it is difficult to investigate the claim further. Rather, the rumor is based solely on hearsay and speculation, which is why we classify it as unfounded.

Pearsall died in the year 2007, but Snopes has reached out to its site administrators and will update this article when we hear back.

Snopes has fact-checked various organ transplant rumors in the past, including claims that a man 27 people killed After winning the heart of a serial killer, he treats him specifically Allow patients who are organ donors to diethat a baby could Know his mother’s heart in another body and that they were Mexican immigrants forced to give up their kidneys to enter the USA