Postmortem: How Medical Examiners Explain Suspicious Deaths (Fieldwork Encounters and Discoveries)

I actually work for the ME office and wanted to know what others that do this job, think about the job etc............The chapter on donors was very good. Lots of issues have risen with the almost FORCED DONATION people have to face. I am glad some of that was brought up. Interesting to hear how all of the donation legislation is passed with very little imput from the people on the front lines of this. ME/nurses/docters. I know a lot of nurses who have removed donor from their drivers license because of the aggressive approach by the donation group. They will have it addressed in a living will. And let the family decide. The choice is taken totally out of the legal NOK's hands once DONOR is on your DL. They, the donor organization don't even have to tell family before they procede with organ donation. They may be non profit but they make a lot of money doing this. I think more light should be put on this legislation before it is passed. I too forget about the deceased as soon as my investigation is done. Its the only way to keep doing this job, and I was glad to hear that is how others cope too. Sympathy but not empathy.................or you will never get through the day..............and it drives me nuts when I am constantly asked how I do it, blah blah, you either can or you can't.............I usually just tell people I work for the "county" when I am asked what I do for a living..........Not easy reading book and not for everyone.................. but well worth it

Not a fun read...qusi scientific with enough detail to satisfy anybody shor of a fourth year med student...lots of details such as what is the difference between a medical Examiner and a Coroner...a walk through of a autopsy of an unkown death and how the ME made critical decision as to how the person died.The author then goes into spacific areas of interest such as suicide...infant deaths...murder and the organ tissue trade.A criticism of this book to some might be that the author uses fictious names, places and ME's in telling his stories. Although he explain this in the preface and provides extensive notes and source material this may bother the purists among us, I didn't find it to be a problem.

So far its a very good book.

As a practicing forensic pathologist, I will recomend this book to anybody interested in the topic, specially my colleagues in this line of work. THe questions and arguments expressed in it are worth considering everytime we make a decision as to cause of death and specially on something so subjective as manner of death. This book is an open invitation to reflect on topics that we take for granted.Pedro M. Ortiz Colom MD

interesting.

I highly recommend this book, but only to those people who are medicolegal death investigators. It is a unique look at our profession from a social sciences standpoint. It is not an easy read but it definately changed my perspective.

This was not it--it could not keep my attention and seemed to drag on-I never finished it.Maybe being a Medical person I already knew too much about what was in the book.

I was expecting a book more along the lines of The Body Farm or other "True Crime" books. I found this book to be more like a thesis. It is not a recreational read but rather more like a textbook.I should have read the product description closer