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Cotard’s Syndrome: When a Person Believes They are Dead

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Psychiatrists call Cotard’s syndrome a delusion of grandeur turned inside out. The disease is a mania of self-denigration. Patients state that they are dead, decayed and are walking dead, or that they are criminals and murderers.

In scientific terms, Cotard’s syndrome or delusion is defined as a nihilistic, hypochondriac depressive delusion, combined with the ideas of vastness. Patients believe that they turned into walking dead, great criminals and other “dark lords.”

Those suffering from Cotard’s syndrome are characterized by denigrating themselves to the point of absurdity, and the size comparable with delusions of grandeur. For example, a person may claim that they poisoned the entire world with their poisonous breath or infected the entire world population with AIDS. Often, patients think that they are dead, and their existence is an illusion and that they are an empty shell.

Cotard’s syndrome is also called “delusional denial.” This was the name used by a French neurologist Cotard in 1880.

Patients may argue that they have no brain, heart or lungs. It also happens that “delusional denial” applies to the intellectual and moral qualities. Patients complain about the complete lack of intelligence, conscience and knowledge. Sometimes patients deny the existence of the external world; complain that the earth is empty, that living people have no souls and just empty shells, etc.

Despite the fact that these symptoms taken separately may appear to some as witty observations of the reality, people with Cotard’s syndrome experience real suffering.

It is not easy to feel like a walking dead for years. It is assumed that this mental illness is an extreme form of depression. Cotard’s syndrome occurs as a side effect of schizoaffective disorders and may accompany senile dementia and other brain malfunctions.

It is not known how common this condition is. Modern drugs successfully treat depression, and experts suspect that this state is exceedingly rare today. However, patients who feel that they are dead exist to this day.

Because of the pathological belief that they are dead, the patients may attempt suicide to get rid of the “useless shell” – their body. They die of starvation, assuming that they no longer need to eat, or pour acid on themselves to stop being a “walking dead”.

Recently, New Scientist magazine published a unique story of a man who considered himself dead for a decade. This case is surprising because the patient’s delusions of “dead brain” turned out to be true to some extent.

Ten years ago, Graham woke up and felt dead. For a long time before that Graham had suffered from a severe depression. He even tried to commit suicide by throwing an electric appliance into a bath filled with water.

That morning, Graham realized that during a suicide attempt he killed his brain. He reported that he felt that he simply did not have brain any longer. When hospitalized, he assured doctors that pills would not help because he had no brain as he burned it in the bathtub.

The doctors’ reasoning had little effect on Graham. They could not convince him that if he could speak, breathe, eat and move his body was alive and his brain actually worked. He said he was just annoyed with the doctors’ words because he did not know how he could say or do something without a brain.

Graham did show some signs of brain damage. For example, he assured that he has lost his sense of smell. However, theoretically it could have been another component of his depressive delusions. The man lost interest in the activities he previously enjoyed.

He did not want to see people as it made no sense to him. He did not enjoy anything. He used to love his car but then lost any interest in it. Even his bad habits lost their appeal, for example, Graham quit smoking. He no longer felt the taste of cigarettes or found this activity pleasant.

Doctors at the local hospital did not know what to do and sent Graham directly to two world-famous neurologists, Adam Zeman of the University of Exeter (UK), and Stephen Laureys from the University of Liege (Belgium).

The scientists were astonished to find out through positron emission tomography (PET) that in some way Graham was right. Metabolic activity in significant parts of the frontal and parietal regions of his brain was abnormally low, in fact, so low that it looked like a snapshot of a person in a vegetative state.

“I have been administering PET for 15 years and have never met a person who would be on his feet, able to communicate, but had this anomaly,” Laureys confessed.

In a sense, part of Graham’s brain was indeed nearly dead, the scientist added: “His brain worked as if he was under anesthesia or sleeping. As far as I know, this is quite a unique phenomenon for the brain of a person who is awake.”

His colleague Zeman who also worked with Graham believes that the reduced metabolism caused pathological changes in the patient’s perception of the world. Interestingly, the patient’s delirium in some way proved to be prophetic. “We still do not know very much about the mind,” Laureys said.

First the news of the results of the scan did not have any effect on Graham. He still felt dead, and considered any treatment of his “empty shell” a misery bordering on torture. He had to make peace with the fact that he would not be able to die for real

The man used to go to the cemetery, and the police would bring him back every time. According to Graham, he belonged with the dead. By that time his teeth were black because he refused to brush them. For some reason, he lost all the hair on his legs, and the doctors were not able to explain why.

Gradually, however, Graham’s condition improved. After the brain scan he was prescribed an appropriate treatment based on medication and psychotherapy. Before his brothers and a nurse had to look after him, but now he is able to live independently and cope with household chores on his own.

“I cannot say that I completely returned to normal, but now I feel much better,” he said. “I can run errands and leave the house.”

Graham added that he no longer believed that his brain was dead, but sometimes the world around him seemed strange. He is not afraid of death but feels lucky that he is still alive.

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Experts Declare Experimental Cancer Vaccine Based On mRNA Technology Is ‘Safe and Effective’

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A new cancer vaccine based on Covid mRNA vaccine technology
which has yet to be clinically tested has already been declared “safe
and effective” by the British government.

Known as ‘LungVax’,
the new vaccine is being developed by the University of Oxford, the
Francis Crick Institute and University College London, and is expected
to be the first of a huge range of new cancer vaccinations available in
the near future.

Research scientists developing the ‘groundbreaking’ lung cancer
vaccine claim it will be effective in preventing up to 90 per cent of
cases by training the immune system to locate and attack early signs of
disease.

Lung cancer cells look different from normal cells due to having ‘red
flag’ proteins called neoantigens. The LungVax vaccine will carry a strand of DNA which trains the immune system to recognize these neoantigens on abnormal lung cells.

It will then instruct the immune system to destroy these cells and stop lung cancer.

Professor Tim Elliot, lead researcher at the University of Oxford, said: ‘Cancer
is a disease of our own bodies and it’s hard for the immune system to
distinguish between what’s normal and what’s cancer. 

‘Getting the immune system to recognize and attack cancer is one of the biggest challenges in cancer research today.”

Elliot admitted the new vaccine is based on technology used to create the Covid vaccine.

‘This research could deliver an off-the-shelf vaccine based on
Oxford’s vaccine technology, which proved itself in the Covid pandemic.

Remarkably, given the disastrous health consequences for those
vaccinated with the experimental Covid vaccines, Eilliot praised the
mRNA roll out as a success.

‘If we can replicate the kind of success seen in trials during
the pandemic, we could save the lives of tens of thousands of people
every year in the UK alone.’

Researchers have been granted up to £1.7 million from Cancer Research UK and the CRIS Cancer Foundation.

The team will receive funding for the study over the next 2 years to
support lab research and initial manufacturing of 3,000 doses of the
vaccine at the Oxford Clinical BioManufacturing Facility.

If successful, the vaccine will move straight into a clinical trials,
involving those at biggest risk of disease, such as current and former
smokers who currently qualify for targeted lung health checks in some
parts of the UK.

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TV Host Demands Gov’t ‘Take Control’ of Elon Musk’s X To ‘Shut Down’ Conspiracy Theories

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Elon Musk’s X must be “shut down” by government because dangerous “conspiracy theories” are spreading on the social media platform, according to British TV host Jeremy Vine.

“If there any argument to say, and this will sound crazy, but
China does it, we’ve got to now take control of Twitter and shut it down
for the time being,”
said Vine.

Vine made the comments earlier this week during a heated debate
regarding speculation surrounding the health and whereabouts of Kate
Middleton, the Princess of Wales.

‘We’ve now got to take control of Twitter’…..???????????? ⁦@elonmuskpic.twitter.com/GonHWCr90c

— Right Said Fred (@TheFreds) March 20, 2024

Boomers have become obsessed with speculating that Middleton has died or is severely unwell and that the Royal Family is hiding it because she hasn’t been seen in months after an operation.

The manipulation of a series of photo of Middleton and her children also only served to fuel the rumors, as some sources close to the princess claimed she had been murdered by the royal family.

However, instead of dismissing the whole issue for what it is, a pointless distraction that will disappear once Middleton makes a public appearance around Easter, Vine called for draconian measures.

Modernity report:

Ah yes, the Communist dictatorship of China, which shuts down the Internet to clamp down on dissent and enhance its repression of undesirables.

That’s definitely who we should be mimicking, Jeremy.

Throughout the COVID pandemic, Vine’s show was a platform for some of the most vulgar, authoritarian drivel imaginable.

One show asked if children who are unvaccinated should be banned from schools or made to wear special badges.

Another asked, “Is it time to ban the unvaccinated from traveling?”

Vine has made a name for himself as being a dutiful amplifier of regime messaging, while his annoying side hobby of biking around London looking to film confrontations with motorists has also angered many.

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