Dead man walking

[germdoc]

This is a first--autopsy saves a person's life BEFORE he is dead:

http://abcnews.go.com/International/...ory?id=3611647

Reminds me of that old joke about what the rabbi would like mourners to say at his funeral; "Look! He's moving!"

[Sawduster]

Man, that has got to be a scarey thing. Imagine if they had decided to take the top off his skull as their first procedure.

[Uncle Cracker]

I'm the first to admit that I don't know much about autopsies, but the face seems to be an unusual place to start cutting.

[scorrpio]

Not if it appears that death was caused by head trauma.

That said, even if he were in a coma, wouldn't there be breath, pulse, heartbeat etc and isn't checking for them not mandatory?

I've heard some pretty nasty things about that region of the world. Looks like someone was in too much of a hurry to harvest his organs.

[Uncle Cracker]

Not if it appears that death was caused by head trauma.

Yeah, but starting at the chin? Somebody's mother is gonna have to see that in a casket.

[gslyons]

That's quite a coincidence. Just last night I read the short story 'Autopsy Room Four' from Steven King's collection 'Everythings Eventual'. It's a first person account of someone going through a similar situation. In the story, the victim was bitten by a very venomous snake while golfing and the coroner recognizes his post-mortem ineligibility due to his uhh... ...errrr... ...tumescence.

~g

[Sawduster]

Now you done made me have to go look up a word.

I've had the less than joyful honor of being present at a couple of post mortums, and generally initial incisions were into the chest cavity, but I guess if the guy looked like he died from trauma to the chin, then they might start there.

Does seem that someone saw some dollar signs (or pesos or whatever they spend down there) that impeded their abilities to detect respiration. Though had the body been in the fridge at the morgue for even a few hours, body functions could have decreased to near undetectable without some means of amplification and they had no reason to check at that point considering that someone had obviously made the death declaration, likely in the field.

[MilDoc]

Ouch! Sure am glad he woke up before they did too much ...