Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 11, 1990 TAG: 9004110222
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Medium
"The results suggest quite strongly that some people are able to postpone death briefly in order to reach an occasion which is psychologically significant to them," said lead researcher David Phillips, a sociology professor.
Both groups - Jewish men and Chinese women - were residents of California, where the study was conducted.
"In the case of the Chinese, there was a drop of 35 percent in the mortality before the holiday," he said Tuesday from the University of California at San Diego in La Jolla.
"And there was a peak in deaths of 35 percent the week after, over what would normally be expected," he said.
"In the case of the Jews, the drop was somewhat smaller. It was about 24 percent," Phillips said. "And there was a peak, correspondingly, in the week just after the holiday - in that case, Passover," he said.
The only possible explanations for the findings are a mind-over-body effect, careful adherence to medication schedules or enhanced care by family or physicians, the researchers said.
Findings about the Chinese were published in today's Journal of the American Medical Association. Findings about the Jews were published in 1988 in the British journal Lancet.
Phillips and fellow researcher Daniel Smith wrote that the phenomenon may be associated with psychologically significant events beyond cultural holidays.
A famous example is the death of Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence.
Jefferson died July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the document's signing and only after he had asked his physician, "Is it the Fourth?" and received the reassurance, "It soon will be," Phillips said.
"What we did in this particular study was choose a holiday which was unlike July 4th, because it moves around the calender and appeals to one group and not another," Phillips said.
It involved looking at computerized death records of Chinese women 75 years old and older in California during the 24-week period around the Harvest Moon Festival each year for the 15 years 1960 through 1984.
Elderly Chinese women were chosen as subjects because they hold the central ceremonial role in the holiday's observances, the researchers said.
The dip in their death rates before the holiday and subsequent peak in their death rates immediately afterward was absent in Jewish women the same age and in non-Jewish, non-Chinese women in the population at large, the researchers said.
Similarly, in the study of Jews and Passover, which focused on about 1,900 men, who have a central role in the holiday, the dip-peak effect in death rates was found to be absent among Chinese and among men in the population at large.
by CNB