The woman had been widowed. Her husband liked to drink beer. He didn't just like to drink beer, he loved to drink beer. One day he unexpectedly committed suicide. You would think that this is the end of the story, wouldn't you? Well it wasn't the end. The guy was an organ donor. It seems that his organs did a lot of good for people. One of the people that received an organ, got his heart. If he hadn't gotten it, he would have surely died. After the operation about a year had passed, when he decided to write to his doctors and thank them for saving his life. One day a few years later, he was driving in his car with a friend and out of the blue he stated that he needed a beer. His friend responded that he knew that the guy didn't drink and wondered why he said what he said? The response was that he needed a beer, so he stopped the car and got one. Not long after that he committed suicide too. This case, while being strange is not unique. There is a theory that some people believe, that states that some organs and body parts, retain the memory of the person they were taken from.

Some people think that this is only the stuff of horror films and certainly there have been enough of them made that have this as their subject matter. I remember one in particular that had to do with a pair of eyes that were donated to someone from a killer. The phenomena of memory being passed along from one person to another in body parts is known as cellular memory. How did we ever get the idea that parts from one person can effect the memory and/or personality of another? I think that the idea is an ancient one. Some primitive tribes had certain beliefs that seem barbaric to us as modern people, but they thought that these ideas were quite reasonable. One of these beliefs was that if you ate the heart of your brave enemy, you would get his courage. Some people still believe that eating certain animal organs will convey some of the desirable traits of the animal to the person who ate him. One person who received a heart and lung transplant, stated that she developed a craving for beer, something that her donor loved, but that she never desired previously.

Not everyone thinks that cellular memory exists, but of those who doubt it, some have just as strange a theory to replace it. A bunch of people believe that many people who donate organs were young people who were killed in tragic and quick accidents. Because of this they have formed a theory that states that the deceased are still here and exerting influence over their former body parts. They feel that these people may not realize that they are dead, or they feel that since their deaths were so sudden, that they didn't have a chance to finish their mission on earth, whatever that was. There is also a dark side to some theories that state that some of the people that were killed, resent the fact that others are using their body parts. Even though they were donors, it is said that they didn't expect this to happen when they were so young, so they were taking their vengeance on the living who received their organs. Unfortunately there are a lot of those phoney paranormal types that use this as an excuse to charge people a lot of money to remove the problem.

One professional that deals with pain and rehabilitation has stated that he decided to study the relationship between mind and body and that he became thoroughly convinced, after dealing with many people that he worked with, who had received organ transplants, that organs do contain cellular memory and he further stated that he had personally observed these people develop character traits that were later found out to be the same ones that the original donors had. We have to remember that the people who received the donations had no idea of the personality traits of the donor, so it can't be a psychological thing as some have suggested. For that to be true, one would have to know something about the donor and most of these donations are anonymous. One author of a book, that examined the subject entitled, "Molecules of Emotion", said, "Memories are stored not only in the brain, but in a psychosomatic network extending into the body . . . all the way out along pathways to internal organs and the very surface of our skin." While this certainly is one theory on the subject, it is not very widely accepted. Can we say that it is wrong? I don't think that we are prepared to say that this is absolutely impossible, but I am sure that many think it is unlikely.

There are a lot of unexplained things that happen to people who have organ donations. There is the case of the woman that was terrified of heights. She received a lung transplant and her fear of heights went away. How can this be? It turned out that the transplant came from a mountain climber. A lawyer needed a heart and was lucky enough to receive one. (I didn't know lawyers needed one. Sorry only kidding.) He began to get craving for Snicker bars. It turned out that the heart that he had received had come from a 14 year old boy. One woman claims that when she received her kidney transplant she also received a personality change. Her kidney donation came from a 59 year old man and now the lady that received his kidney believes that she has acquired many of his traits. One of the things that she points to as evidence, is her taste in literature. It has changed completely. Whether this is concrete evidence of organs having memory or not, I have to say a resounding NO. I can't help but think that some people have been reading about this stuff and some of them have had transplants and maybe some of their tastes have changed and after reading about this stuff, they say to themselves, "Oh I must have acquired traits from my transplant".

There is no doubt that the subject of organ memory should be investigated more thoroughly by science. The reason for this is the fact that there is just so much we don't know, even though some think that we are barking up the wrong tree, so to speak. The human body is like the universe, it is an area that still has a lot to be explored and which we really only know about a small percentage of what is happening. It could turn out that some of our body parts have functions that we never imagined. Then there are the parts who's function is a mystery, like our appendix. It could just turn out that we have a lot more potential than we suspect. Imagine if we could store memory in our entire body. If we could control this, we would have memory potential that we never suspected. As I said, no one knows if cellular memory exists and many doubt it, but we just can't rule it out entirely, because we have to somehow account for what is happening to some people that receive organs.