Doubts Over Eben Alexander's Flying On A Butterfly In Heaven Story

Last week I published a post Flying On A Butterfly In Heaven which was based on a book by a Dr Eben Alexander. I included a quote from the Daily Mail in the post.

Since then I read the following letter on the Daily Mail’s letter page:

This concerned me as I always publish in good faith. I therefore made a few enquiries on the Internet about Dr Alexander. Amazingly the Daily Mail wrote the following about this man on 24 Dec 2013 – but still went on to promote his book in October 2014 with articles over several days.

• ‘Proof of Heaven’ doctor faced a $3million malpractice lawsuit when he fell into a coma
• Dr Eben Alexander was tied for the highest number of medical malpractice suits at the time that he fell into a coma following an E. coli infection
• He wrote a book in 2012 about his experience ‘seeing the other side’
• He touted the book as the work of a neurosurgeon, but he hadn’t practised surgery- let alone neurosurgery- for four years prior to the publication

For the full December 2013 Daily Mail article see here.

Esquire magazine also did an investigation. They write:

Unfortunately Esquire now require payment to view the full article see here.

If we look at Wikipedia they write:

One of the factors about Alexander’s books is that it is, to quote, “A neurosurgeon’s journey into the afterlife.” This gave the book a certain status.

It’s still possible that Alexander did have that ‘journey’ but it does now feel a little tainted.

I wanted to clarify this so readers have the facts as I now know them.