edu(b)log

Happy End of Semester!

Many of you are graduating and you will be sorely missed. For those of you taking class over the summer, I hope that you will join me in Discrete II and/or Biology I so that I can have some company for my misery! Goodbye Spring '06… Two more semesters to go!

Cause of Death (Cont.)

Student Presentation: Death by Arsenic

20^th most abundant element on earth (a metalloid). Most arsenic-containing compounds are odorless and tasteless. It is ranked #1 on the list of hazardous substances.

How can it enter the body?

Arsenic can get into the body through inhalation and ingestion. It can also enter the body through environmental exposure (Bangladesh — water contamination). Also common through occupational exposure and intentional exposure.

There are two types of exposure: acute and chronic. Acute is a large dose in a short amount of time. It will result in the loss of enzyme function. Arsenate blocks ATP production and cell signaling. Chronic exposure is low doses over long periods of time. It blocks hormones by binding to hormone receptors in the body. It also affects heart cells. Symptoms are headaches, lightheadedness, stomach pains, vomiting, skin discoloration, blisters, delirium, increases cancer of lungs, bladder, etc.

Tests for Arsenic Poisoning

Tests for arsenic poisoning are urine tests (must be done right after poisoning) and through hair follicles and nails (because it binds to proteins and stays in the hair and nails). Toenails are the best because they have the least contact with the environment.

Cures for Arsenic Poisoning

Cures for arsenic poisoning: If you ingest arsenic, you should take 5 charcoal tablets and eat sulphur-containing foods such as eggs and onions. Dimercaprol can be used internally (also used for mercury and gold poisoning).

Products Containing Arsenic

Products with arsenic are used for agriculture, rat poison, embalming, taxidermy, cigarettes, etc. Arsenic was used as a cure for syphilis (Formula 605). Also used as a skin whitener, emerald green (paint used by impressionists), and as a recreational drug.

Famous People Consuming Arsenic

Napoleon Bonaparte had large quantities of arsenic in his body, but he died from a combination of bitter almonds and calendal (produced mercury cyanide in his stomach). They think he used arsenic for recreational purposes. King George III suffered from porphyria, prompted by arsenic use. Charles Francis Hall was an American explorer who was poisoned by arsenic (by the crew).

Dismemberment and Torture

There are lots of types of saws that can be used to dismember a person. Hand saws and power saws are both common depending on location. The best place to buy dismemberment tools is Home Depot.

Saws have teeth (tooth set) which causes a groove called a Kerf. You can create "false start" Kerfs if your saw jumps around when you start cutting. The other characteristic feature of saw marks is a breakaway spur.

Power saws have small teeth so they produce fine striae while hand saws have fewer teeth and more prominent, deep striae. The location of false starts (superficial kerfs and scratches) and breakaway spur show the direction of the cut. You may be able to tell the number of teeth and the blade width. The width is less than the intact kerf width.

Avulsed means that you can't go any further with a saw.

Ballistics and Gunshot Wounds

There are three types of projectile trauma: handgun and rifles, shotguns, and other projectiles like arrows, spears, etc. Caliber is the diameter of the bullet and/or the barrel. You can't tell from the bone what the caliber of the bullet would have been. Bone can expand and come back again so it will not truly reflect the caliber of the bullet. Shotguns we measure with a gauge (not caliber) and that is the weight of the pellets used in the actual shot.

Shotgun shells have many things in them (shotgun wad, etc) and you can usually find the cartridge case ejected at the scene. There are many gauges for lead, buckshot, and steel shot. Bullets can mushroom and if this happens on contact it will create a different diameter on an entrance wound than if it had stayed "undeformed." As a bullet enters into bone, it will leave particles so even if there is destruction you will see markings or opaque areas on an X-Ray.

GSW Wounds are round and oval in shape. They can also be irregularly shaped (depending on the distance, the velocity, and the angle at which the bullet hits the individual). There are also keyhole wounds. When the bullet comes in at an angle and enters and exits at the same time, you get a keyhole (entrance and exit wounds are the same).

Perforating wounds enter the body and penetrating wounds leave the body (an exit wound is present).

Distinguishing between large and small caliber is difficult. Depending on whether you have a jacketed/unjacketed/shotgun the wounds will appear differently. You can really only estimate the sequence of GSW wounds if you have overlapping skull fractures.

Contact Wounds in soft tissue will create an abrasion ring, muzzle imprint, grey black discoloration, and star shaped entrance wound. Keyhole wounds happen if the bullet enters at a weird tangent (creates that entrance and pops off a plug of bone) or an entrance and an exit at the same location.

High velocity bullet entrances will have radiating fracture patterns and a look of a lot of force. Low velocity will be a perfectly circular small entrance wound. Just like blunt force trauma we will have (with more than one) intersecting fracture lines which can indicate a sequence of events.

Wounds will be "neater and smaller" at the entrance and larger and messier on the exit.

Death by Asphyxia

Asphyxia death will be caused by a foreign object stuck in the throat, manual strangulation, postural asphyxia (passing out in a strange position can cut off your own airway or you can choke on your own vomit), and hanging. Manual strangulation and hanging would leave marks on the skeleton. Hyoid fractures occur by strangulation. If you die by hanging you break the C2 (dens).

If a person drowns there won't be any visible skeletal effects. However, if you have a person who is still alive when they drown they will breathe in water and diatoms. Diatoms will be present in the lungs and they will also be distributed through the blood stream quickly. They will enter into the medullar cavity of the long bones. After the soft tissue disappears through decomposition, diatoms are preserved well. The cellular walls are made of silica, which preserves well.

Every water body will have its own species of diatoms. There are 10 million genetic species, 50% marine and 50% freshwater.

Cause of Death

Reminder: THERE WILL BE A QUIZ NEXT WEEK »

There will be a quiz on spontaneous human combustion, shaken baby syndrome, The Ice Man, paraphilia, and the student presentations from tonight. The quiz will not be on cause of death (tonight's lecture topic).

Date: April 20, 2006.

Student Presentation: Death Penalty

The death penalty is the governmental use of execution as punishment for a crime. There are 38 states utilizing the death penalty.

Capital offenses include first degree murder, aircraft hijacking, rape of a minor, terrorism, treason, narcotics conspiracy (varies by state).

Methods of death penalty include electrocution, lethal injection, gas chamber, hanging, and firing squad.

Electrocution uses a large oak chair with restraints and a headpiece with an electrode. A wet sponge is placed between the scalp and the electrode. Volts will cycle from 2,300 to 1,000 until the offender is dead. New York was the first state to adopt this method. It was the most common method of execution until 1980.

Lethal Injection is done with three drugs applied intravenously. Oklahoma adopted this method in 1977.

The gas chamber has a container on the side of a chair and the cyanide pellets mix with the sulfuric acid.

Only three states utilize hanging as a method of execution.

For a firing squad, the offender is plaved in a chair with a pan beneath to catch blood. Three to six shooters per incident, one or more with blanks so nobody knows who fired the fatal shot. Also only used in three states.

Historically, people would be beheaded, hung-drawn-and-quartered, or broken on the wheel (offender placed on a platform and a wheel is used to roll over them and break their limbs). There was also burning at the stake (for witchcraft, heresy, atheism, and homosexuality). Other historical methods include crushing, impalement, stoning, and crucifixion.

Student Presentation: Death In The Workplace

Note: The accuracy of this information has been disputed, so please keep in mind that these were class notes and the information provided should not be used as a source without verification. These are notes from a college course on Forensic Anatomy and have not been verified outside of the classroom.

In 2004, 5703 people died on the job or due to their job in the US. The most common manner of death on the job is driving a motor vehicle (24%) and other forms of transportation (43% including motor vehicles). The next highest is contact with equipment/machinery. Also falls, violence, and exposure to hazardous substances are common manners of death.

Store supervisors and shift managers are most likely to die from homicide. Construction workers are most likely to fall (most fall to lower level i.e. more than a story). You are more likely to die of homicide if you are a retail worker than if you are a police officer.

The deadliest industries are construction, transportation and warehousing, agriculture, forestry fishing and hunting, and mining. The highest rates of death are logging, mining, and fishing.

OSHA has improved workplace safety and claim that they cut workplace fatalities by 60% when the work force has more than doubled in the same period of time.

If you die at work, the employer must pay for the funeral up to $7,000. Money also goes to the spouse and child up to $150,000. They also must provide ~80 credit hours of student fees to the surviving spouse if (s)he is unemployed. Employers (4+ employees) are required to pay worker's compensation for employees injured on the job.

Cause of Death (Skeletal Evidence)

There are certain things we can tell from the skeleton, including the instrument used, the time of assault, direction of assault, intent (accident vs. intentional), relative position of victim and assailant.

Pathologist or medical examiner make the ultimate decision on the cause of death, but the forensic anthropologist will help by recording:

• Location (anatomical terminology)
• Number of trauma incidents on the skeleton
• Size of each
• Shape of each
• Whether foreign matter is present
• Internal damage (what soft tissues might have been impacted)
• Whether the individual had previous pathologies (antemortem disease processes that could leave marks on the skeleton that mimic trauma)

There are different types of trauma that will leave specific marks on the skeleton.

• Blunt impact
• Sharp force trauma
• Firearms
• Burns
• Asphyxial wounds (hanging, strangulation)
• Drowning

TRAUMA

Blunt force trauma is inflicted by anything that can impart force from an object to the skeleton where you are not necessarily penetrating the skin with a sharp edge. You will have either flat or round surface but not a sharp surface. Baseball bat, hammer, mallet, golf clubs, car, frying pans, and anything else (not sharpe) you can swing with force can be used to inflict blunt force trauma. Things can also fall on you and you can fall and inflict blunt force trauma.

Sharp force trauma has to have an instrument with a point or a sharp edge. You will have force but also the point or sharp edge will perforate the skin and/or penetrate through the bone.

Projectile wounds include gunshot wounds or other projectiles (shrapnel, etc).

Child skull fracture

When you have a situation where you impart a lot of force from an object to a human skeleton you end up with fracture lines. There are two types: radiating (from the point of impact outwards) and concentric or hoop fractures (caused by inward and outward bending of the surface of bone).

Radiating lines will continue until there is something to stop them (e.g. suture lines in the skull or previous radiating fractures).

Impact Site: recognized by crushed and fractured bone with radiating fractures emanating from that site. You can also have an impact site that doesn't have radiating lines if the impact had less force.

Tool Mark: Identifiable trauma that may be used to discern a characteristic of the weapon.

Infraction: an incomplete fracture.

Displacement: when fractured surfaces no longer meet or meet at an unnatural angle. Typical if you are hit by a car (in the longbones).

Hinge Fracture: an infraction that is still attached at an unnatural angle.

Green Stick Fracture: breaks in bones without separation. The most common fractures that are seen in child abuse cases. Part of the reason is because they have a higher percentage of collagen in their bones compared to the mineral component.

Simple Fractures: Bones is broken into two different segments.

Comminuted Fractures: Multiple fragments. Happens if someone hits you with a car and your bone is in multiple pieces and needs plates/screws to be put back together.

Multiple skull fractures from great force

We may be able to tell the weight of the instrument used, but normally it is classified only as heavy or light. In some occasions you can tell the size of the weapon (length, width). You will look at a diffused area (a distinct area of impact is not visible) or a focused area (a clear impact but the imprint of the instrument is not clear).

You may be able to tell the shape of the weapon (its cross sectional outline and its longitudinal configuration). Round shapes are difficult, but angular weapons make it more likely to see characteristics which can identify the instrument.

Plastic deformation occurs when you have severe force. Major fracture lines can occur away from the impact site when there is enough force. Things get pulled apart and deformed during the act of trauma and the skull does not return to its original shape.

Patterned Injuries

You may be able to identify the causative instrument. The imprint of the impacting instrument is clearly visible on the affected tissue.

Estimation of Body Position

You may or may not be able to tell the direction of impact unless you are dealing with angulated fractures with tool markings. If you are going to estimate the number of blows and the sequence you need to be able to determine the site of impact. If the wounds do not overlap you cannot determine the sequence. You need wound patterns with specific radiating fracture lines coming off of them.

Deceleration Injuries

Plane and automobile accidents (inside the vehicle) and falls from heights will have deceleration injuries. You will have injuries to the joint surfaces.

SHARP FORCE TRAUMA

Sharp force trauma is a result of narrowly focused point of force with dynamic compression forces applied to the surface of bone. Characteristics depend on the direction, the focus, and the energy of the causative force. These will dictate the kind of trauma we see on the skeleton.

There are different classifications of sharp force trauma:

• Puncture wounds
• Incisions (cut through skin but only leave a mark on the bone)
• Cleft (cross-sectional v-shape)
• Additional discontinuities — fracture lines, hinge fractures, and chips of bone (wastage)

Most blunt force trauma affects the skull, but most sharp force trauma is aimed at the soft tissue areas (somewhere in the torso).

Punctures will be directed force in a small area. Weapons are usually coming down vertically in comparison to the bone surface. The shape of the wound is usually circular but can be oblong (dependent on direction and type of weapon). Because you have force coming down you may also have adjoining fracture lines or hinge fractures.

Incisions are defects that are longer than they are wide. How forces are applied will be different from the ones we've covered already. You usually do not have fracture lines or hinge fractures in this type of wound. Cuts can be thin lines or strongly V-shaped. Typical to a knife. These wounds typically occur in the torso.

With Clefts or notches there is usually a stronger, dynamic force and a large, long, sharp edge. You will still have v-shaped notches penetrating the interior of the bone. You may have fracture lines and hinge fractures because of the force.

We can look at the length and width of knives, as well as whether they are single/double edged and serrated or smooth.

DISMEMBERMENT

Often head and hands are dismembered to avoid identification of an individual. Dismemberment is the intentional separation of body segments. It prevents detection of manner of death and identity. It is a very difficult thing to do and often leaves behind a lot of evidence.

Student Presentations and Weird Death Things

Student Presentation: Shaken Baby Syndrome

Definition: An injury caused by someone violently shaking a baby. Force is usually equivalent to a baby falling off of a second story building.

Infant's neck muscles are not well developed and provide little support. The brain strikes the skull as it is shaken back and forth.

Clinical signs: Subdural Hematoma, Retinal Hemorrhages, Retinal Detachment (causes blindness). Cerebral adema is also a sign, causing pressure on the brain and the brain stem. Diffuse Axonal Injury is also a sign as well as "black brain" (wasting away of brain due to lack of blood supply).

Why does it happen? An infant can spend an average of three hours a day crying so usually the caregiver will become frustrated and shake the baby to make him stop. Click here for symptoms.

Statistics: It is estimated that every year nearly 50,000 children are shaken in the United States. The average age is six months and 60% of the victims are male. The perpetrators are 80% male, usually in their early 20s.

SBS is very difficult to diagnose and as a result minor cases become confused with cholic, etc. Doctors look for hemorrhages in the retinas of the eyes, skull fractures, swelling of the brain, etc.

Student Presentation: Spontaneous Human Combustion

Definition: the mysterious phenomenon of someone bursting into flames without explanation. There is no ignition source; flames begin in the person's own body and will reduce to ashes in a matter of minutes. This is hotter than any crematorium.

Characteristics: Complete combustion of body with exception of extremities. No apparent source of ignition. Greasy soot from 3 1/2 feet high to ceiling. Brown, oily residue remains. Objects above 3 1/2 feet show heat damage.

Non-fatal cases include mysterious flames, smoke, and burns found on the person. The survivor cannot explain what happened. The explanations include people who have been drinking or are mentally incapacitated.

Fatal cases are 3/4 of documented cases and are the most publicly recognized type, exhibiting all characteristics of SHC.

Theories: Divine punishment, result of excessive drinking (impossible), massive buildup of static charge (also impossible), electric fields in the body short-circuiting, chemical reactions of the digestive tract, geomagnetic fluctuations, poor diet (only happens to Westerners).

Student Presentation: The Iceman and Freezing Preservation

The Iceman was discovered by a vacationing German couple in 1991. There are many theories as to how he died — peaceful death, a fight before the death (misread x-ray), and an arrow. At this point, confrontation is most likely (they found an arrow head embedded in the scapula). There was another wound on his hand.

He was fully clothed with a cap, poncho, etc. He also had weapons, a medicine kit, and tools. He was part of the neolithic people, who were knowledgeable about the environment.

The rescuers were very careless because they thought he was just a regular person. But he is the oldest mummy and was found with neolithic valuables. A museum was built to educate people on the Iceman.

His body was frozen at a glacial temperature of about -20°C. He is currently in the Bolzano museum in Italy in a chamber at -6°C. The temperature and his environment slowed down decomposition. He utilized survival tactics before he died so all of these things make him very well preserved.

Cryogenics vs. Cryonics. Cryogenics is a branch of physics that deals with production and effects of very low temperatures, while cryonics is the freezing of a seriously ill or recently deceased person to stop tissues from decomposing; the body is preserved until new medical cures are developed that might bring the person back to life; "cryonics is more science fiction than serious science". Benjamin Franklin was a proponent of cryonics. Cryonics has been successful with tissues, embryos, and sperm.

Strange Things Dealing with Death

Paraphilia refers to "beyond normal." It's basically loving anything that is anything other than the societal norm. These people are social deviants.

Cannibalism (Again!)

The practice of eating one's own species (not just humans eating humans). In some species this is considered normal (lions, insects, hamsters). The Spaniards were notorious for reporting this activity. Reasons for cannibalism: aggression (towards enemies), affection (relationship with the person you are eating, religion), endocannibalism (within a group of individuals, affectionate), exocannibalism (eating outsiders, aggressive).

There is also nutritional cannibalism, which occurs when you are starving to death and consume another person out of desperation. There are also ritualistic reasons and of course pathological reasons for consuming one of your own species. The early inhabitants of Fiji practiced cannibalism for spiritual reasons.

Modern cannibalism is for two reasons: survival (nutritional) and pathological. E.g. Donner party and 1972 plane crash in the Andes were for survival. There is a group of pathological cannibals who practice this for sexual gratification (sexual cannibalism). This is considered to be a psychological or psychosexual disorder in the Americas. It involves a person sexualizing the consumption of another person's flesh (considered a form of sexual sadism, associated with necrophilia).

Shrinking Heads

Associated with religious ceremonies, proving that you killed a specific enemy, and acquiring power. The process of shrinking a head will preserve it for a long time. They can be souvenirs or for vengeance. In South America and Oceania and Scotland/Ireland during Middle Ages this occurs(ed). A shrunken head is just the skin (not the skull).

Procedure (Shrinking Heads)

1. The head is removed from the body near the trunk. The scalp and skin are slowly peeled off the skull (similar to in an autopsy). The face is difficult and must be cut off with a knife.
2. The scalp is attached to a vine and lowered into a pot of boiling water. Boiling kills bacteria microbes and "cooks" the skin, which shrinks it. It also helps to thicken the skin (partly because the boiling process changes the collagen, making it thicker).
3. The head is removed from the boiling water, attached to a stick, and left to cool.
4. Then they will go to a fire of heated stones and use the stones to burn off flesh and remove remaining blood.
5. They want to maintain a shape, so the fill it with hot sand and keep the scalp in motion and turn it so it starts to take back a round shape. This process is done for days or weeks.
6. The face is molded so that it takes back the characteristics of the human face and as it dries it will shrink.

Necrophilia

Obtaining sexual arousal and gratification by having sexual contact with dead bodies. There are different perspectives on necrophilia and psychiatrists say that there are different steps necrophiliacs will go through. It starts with an erotic attraction of corpses. Most common objective is to obtain possession of unresisting or non-rejecting partner.

The DSM-IV psychiatric diagnosis of necrophilia is "paraphilia, not otherwise specified." They are mostly male between the ages of 20 and 50. Most are heterosexual. Of these individuals, if they are caught or seek psychiatric help, about 60% are diagnosed with other personality disorders. Most commonly hospital orderly, morgue attendant, funeral parlor attendant, and cemetary employees. Most will fantasize about it before they participate in it. Some pay prostitutes to pretend to be dead or ask their girlfriends to do this sort of… ahem… role playing.

There are three types of necrophilia: Necrophilic homicide (killing to obtain a corpse), "regular" necrophilia (use of already dead corpses for sexual pleasure), Necrophilic fantasy.

Well-known homicidal necrophiliacs are Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer. One of the most famous female necrophiliacs was Karen Greenlee. She was the first person charged with desecrating a body for this activity.

Necrophobia

If you are a necrophobe, you have a fear of anything dead. Most of these individuals have a morbid aversion to corpses, and will have nausea, dizziness, chills, and extreme anxiety if they have to be near anything dead.