"Either telepathy or empathy require what I'll call "a sender"--J*** or an EMT, etc. in Gnu's case."

Analysis of gnu's experience is problematic because it is practically impossible to verify experimentally.

Who is going to volunteer to go off into the woods to see if they get a "feeling" when their loved one are injured? Combine that with the likelihood of loved ones willing to volunteer to be injured for the sake of an experiment and you have a very small group of possible experimental subjects.