Are there jobs in your profession that don't require a college degree?

Yes. Many types of scene investigation jobs and crime laboratory jobs do not require a college degree. You should inquire of your local police departments as to their standards for employment. To be a forensic pathologist requires going to medical school.

Are there any cases you've worked on over the years that still bother you?

Yes. Especially when people are convicted of murder when the cause of death was natural because of misinterpretation of autopsy findings. This has happened a few times in my 40 years of investigating unnatural deaths, such as conviction of a person for strangling his wife based on small hemorrhages in the face and bluish discoloration of the front of the body that was caused by the settling of blood post-mortem (livor mortis) and not from any violence. The wife had at autopsy a very severe, active fatal infection of the heart called myocarditis. Overzealous prosecution resulted in his conviction.

How long does a person have to be exposed to motor exhaust to die from carbon monoxide poisoning?

The rapidity of death from carbon monoxide poisoning depends on the amount and how quickly the carbon monoxide is inhaled. A great deal of carbon monoxide comes out of a motor car exhaust and if this is inhaled in a closed space like a garage, loss of consciousness can occur within minutes and death soon thereafter. The carbon monoxide causes death by attaching to the hemoglobin in red blood cells and thereby preventing oxygen from being brought to the cells of the body.

Can you tell, by a chemical test of cerebral fluid or some other means, whether someone was traumatized or peaceful at the moment of death?

Not at present. However, there is presently research being performed by toxicologist Dr. Fredric Rieders examining the amount of adrenline-like compounds and chemicals called ketone bodies that may reflect the degree of stress present at the time of death. Dr. Rieders will provide further information on this through his e-mail address: fredric.rieders@nmslab.com. We cannot tell by facial appearance whether a person was peaceful at the time of death because all muscles, including facial muscles, relax into a gravitational position at the moment that we die and rigor mortis sets in after the muscles have relaxed.

How long does the brain continue to function after death?

The brain is the first body organ to die from lack of oxygen because it is the organ most dependent on receiving a continuous oxygen supply. The brain uses more than 25% of the oxygen we inhale and it only contains about ten seconds worth of oxygen at any time. When oxygen flow diminishes, most commonly because the heart fails as a pump, as in a heart attack, diminished oxygen supply to the brain causes us to lose consciousness and pass out and brain death occurs soon thereafter. The heart muscle does not require as much oxygen so usually the heart continues to function for a few minutes after the brain stops.

What is most satisfying about your work? What drives you to do it?

Most satisfying to me is being able to explain to family members what happened to their loved one and to help answer some of the many questions that arise at this critical and unhappy time in their lives and to assist in bringing closure to this terrible event. I am driven, in part, by the knowledge that there are so few forensic pathologists in this country to do this and if I didn't do it, there might not be someone else available to do it.

Is it possible to determine what caused a particular wound by looking at a photograph, or is it necessary to examine the actual wound?

It is possible to determine what caused a wound by looking at a photograph. Whenever a body is examined, the forensic pathologist's responsibility is to document any injury so that other investigators can review the findings and draw their own independent opinion as to not only cause and manner of death but also as to the nature and cause of all wounds. This is done by verbal description of the wound in the autopsy report and by photographing the wound and, if appropriate, by taking x-rays.

How do you determine whether a child sustained head injuries from a fall onto a hard surface or from "shaken baby syndrome"?

The shaken baby syndrome (SBS) is a major controversial issue presently in forensic medicine. When first described in the early-1970's, the term referred to babies who had bleeding around the brain due to trauma but where pediatricians and radiologists could find no site of traumatic impact, such as a bruise or a skull fracture. It was suggested that the reason for this lack of evidence of external trauma was that the baby was shaken violently because the head did not strike any external surface; thus, the brain must have struck the bones of the inside of the skull -- whether this can happen is still being debated and researched. The diagnosis has become very popular, especially among prosecutors, because the last person with the baby would have had to be the perpetrator and because of its viciousness: in many states, the perpetrator is subject to capital punishment. However, when forensic pathologists perform autopsies on children where no trauma was seen by treating physicians, in the great majority of cases we do find traumatic impact sites not seen during life which indicate that the child was struck and the death would then fall into the battered child syndrome category. This is also a homicidal death but could occur many hours before the child dies and, therefore, have been caused by someone other than whoever was with the baby at the time the baby became comatose. It is not considered as vicious as SBS and usually does not lead to capital punishment charges.

Is it true that maternal DNA is necessary to determine ancestry? If so, how is paternity determined?

No. Maternal DNA is a great help in determining maternal ancestry because a certain kind of DNA, mitochondrial DNA, which is DNA present in the cytoplasm of the cell, is inherited by all children only through the mother. However, the nuclear DNA, which contains both the mother and father's DNA, permits identification of male ancestry through changes in the Y chromosome, as was done in tracing President Thomas Jefferson's geneology. Both the mother's mitrochondrial DNA and the father's Y chromosome DNA can be useful in tracing ancestry.

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