• Question: do you like playing around with dead people?

    Asked by shannonlouise to Kat, Jamie on 11 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Jamie Pringle

      Jamie Pringle answered on 11 Mar 2011:

      I believe medical students do autopsies on bodies donated to science and dental students have a head or two, but personally I dont do anything with dead people – other than try to find buried ones!

      For research purposes, we cant do experiments on human tissue in the UK – hence why I use pigs instead as ‘human proxies’. There are plenty of similarities between us and pigs actually – similar size (especially organs), fat:tissue ratios, skin & hair types. Actually they tend to rot down faster than us as they have less preservatives in their diets! They dont smell too bad either (but then I cant smell very well!).

      The US have different laws than here in the UK – hence why they have human research facilities – see http://web.utk.edu/~fac/ Kat can tell you more about that.

    • Photo: Katherine Davies

      Katherine Davies answered on 11 Mar 2011:

      Hi Shannon

      Firstly forensic scientists don’t ‘play’ with dead people! We try to find out as much information about how, why, when etc they died, but I know what you mean 🙂

      I have only seen two autopsies, and have not yet had the chance to go to a crime scene. Where I am an early career researcher (PhD student), I don’t have yet the experience to be called out to a scene, it is usually the top entomologists in the country that get called, if they are lucky! I can’t wait to witness my first one.

      I do get satisfaction out of knowing that my research one day may help bring a criminal to justice.

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