Birthmarks and birth defects in the head and neck region and claims of past-life memories: Cases in Ian Stevenson's Reincarnation and Biology.

In his massive two-volume monograph Reincarnation and Biology, Ian Stevenson included 75 cases with birthmarks and birth defects affecting the head and neck region of the human body. The present paper provides details of these 75 cases and compares them to 19 similar cases Laura Borges Kirschnick and colleagues found in a systematic review of journal publications. The reports in Stevenson's book are shown to be considerably longer (with a mean of 9 pages vs. 2.1 pages) and more detailed than those considered by Kirschnick et al. Moreover, the cases reported in journals were found not to be representative of those reported in Reincarnation and Biology on several variables. Reincarnation research is unusual among scientific disciplines in its use of book publications and Stevenson's books remain essential resources for the field. Literature reviews in this domain would therefore do well to take into account scholarly books as well as journals. A trustworthiness scale for reincarnation case studies is proposed as an assist to researchers in the construction of study samples.

Congenital physical anomalies associated with deceased persons in reincarnation cases with intermissions of less than nine months.

A literature review of reincarnation cases with identified previous persons found 36 cases in which the "intermission" between lives was less than 9 months. In 9 cases, it was 7 days or fewer. In 32 cases, subjects had birthmarks or birth defects matching the previous person's wounds or other scars in location and appearance. Multiple anomalies appeared in 20 (62.5%) of the 32 cases with physical anomalies. There were 9 natural-death cases and 27 violent-death cases. In 15 (55.5%) of the violent-death cases, there was written documentation of wounds to the previous person. The most extreme birth defects occurred in cases with intermissions of 7 months or more. Interpretations of the data alternative to reincarnation are considered but found inadequate as explanatory models. If examples of reincarnation, these cases raise issues related to when exactly reincarnation occurs and the nature of the process that are important considerations for biology and medicine, as well as for philosophy. One purpose of this paper is to alert the research community to these findings in the hopes of encouraging additional research in this area.