# TV Autopsy accurate? (hey, gabriela!) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 22, 2006, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775 "2006-08-22T17:47:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2006, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/1 "2006-08-22T17:47:42Z")
I watched the premiere of Vanishing on Fox, which was engaging enough. At one point, though, they were having the typical conversation with the coroner, gathered around the corpse. She was making the point that the deceased had been killed and then tattooed. From what I could tell, the Y incision was sewn up, but they showed a shot from straight on to the crown of the head which was gone. But there was a brain still in there. Wouldn’t the brain be gone if they were all done with the internal organs, per the sewn-up incision? ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2006, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/2 "2006-08-23T19:30:22Z")
bump ---
**Author:** ![gabriela](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/db5fbb/32.png) [@gabriela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gabriela)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2006, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/3 "2006-08-23T23:28:47Z")
Sorry, Gigi - musta missed this one! I didn’t see Vanishing, but you are absolutely right. If we’re gonna peel back the scalp and get out the Stryker saw and pop off the cranium, we are taking out that brain. There’s absolutely no way we would open the head and not take the brain out. I mean, you can’t slice it up until it’s on the cutting table. And how you gonna look at the undersurface to see if there are remote or recent gliding contusions without cutting the cranial nerves and the pituitary stalk? I mean!!! And if there are gliding contusions of the undersurface of the frontal and temporal lobes, and they are fresh, then there could be contrecoup injury. And that would mean that he had fallen hard enough to thwack the back of his head, and knocked himself out. Which could have major implications for his cause and manner of death. Because it generally means death was accidental and not inflicted. Which would mean he wasn’t killed. Regardless of his stupid postmortem tattoo McGuffin. There are sometimes hospital autopsies (never done by a coroner: we do forensic autopsies) in which the head is not opened, because the family forbids it. (Family doesn’t get to make conditions in a coroner’s autopsy. We think it oughta be done, it gets done. Period. As we think we oughta do it.) But nobody in their right mind would go as far as removing the crown of the head, and then leave the brain in. Did I say before you’re absolutely right? My best guess is the corpse was an actor wearing a crown-is-gone-brain-is-exposed makeup device, and he didn’t want to have his brain taken out. Either that, or they were criminally misinformed about how an autopsy is done… ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2006, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/4 "2006-08-24T14:31:58Z")
In this case I believe the guy is shot through the forehead, and yet the brain looks intact with no big blowout out the back. I guess it depends on the angle, but I would have thought a close examination of the head and contents would have happened. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2006, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/5 "2006-08-24T15:44:33Z")
> [@gabriela](#): > > But nobody in their right mind would go as far as removing the crown of the head, and then leave the brain in. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2006, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/6 "2006-08-24T16:39:56Z")
Speaking of autopsies…did you catch _Autopsy Room 4_, a story in TNT’s _Nightmares and Dreamscapes_, based on Stephen King’s short stories? How realistic would it be that someone could be completely paralyzed, yet still alive and the doctors not figure that out before they start carving into them? Fortunately, in true King fashion, they figured it out before the actual carving because the man got an erection while the doctor was moving his package around, looking at interesting scars on his thighs. But still…very scary! ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2006, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/7 "2006-08-24T17:22:17Z")
Yeah, while watching I found myself wishing **gabriela** was there to MST3K it. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2006, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/8 "2006-08-24T17:33:02Z")
The thing that bugged me was that he was completely paralyzed, so he even couldn’t blink. Ew ew ew ew! I was blinking furiously during that show, let me tell you. Wouldn’t his eyeballs have dried out? ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2006, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/9 "2006-08-24T17:46:12Z")
> [@ivylass](#): > > The thing that bugged me was that he was completely paralyzed, so he even couldn’t blink. Ew ew ew ew! I was blinking furiously during that show, let me tell you. > > Wouldn’t his eyeballs have dried out? I think the part that bugged me was the loooong thermometer up his nether regions. :eek: And that they weren’t more careful and missed the snakebite. ---
**Author:** ![gabriela](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/db5fbb/32.png) [@gabriela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gabriela)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/10 "2006-08-25T00:56:58Z")
> [@ivylass](#): > > Speaking of autopsies…did you catch _Autopsy Room 4_, a story in TNT’s _Nightmares and Dreamscapes_, based on Stephen King’s short stories? > > How realistic would it be that someone could be completely paralyzed, yet still alive and the doctors not figure that out before they start carving into them? > > Fortunately, in true King fashion, they figured it out before the actual carving because the man got an erection while the doctor was moving his package around, looking at interesting scars on his thighs. But still…very scary! Carving as in autopsy? Er, ahem. We don’t autopsy people until they’re really most sincerely dead. In proof of which, we need either: 1. A signed note from your third-grade teacher cosigned by your parents; 2. A flatline EEG; 3. A flatline EKG and several rounds of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (full “code” not just CPR); 4. Decomposition. If you’re going to submit #1 we would like it cosigned by God the Father. If you’re in condition to get an erection you are NOT in condition to provide either 2( 3) or 4). Sometimes in my dreams, someone I am performing an autopsy on talks to me, but never in real… uh, morgue. ---
**Author:** ![gabriela](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/db5fbb/32.png) [@gabriela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gabriela)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/11 "2006-08-25T01:02:27Z")
> [@ivylass](#): > > The thing that bugged me was that he was completely paralyzed, so he even couldn’t blink. Ew ew ew ew! I was blinking furiously during that show, let me tell you. > > Wouldn’t his eyeballs have dried out? Yes! They would. In dead people this is called tache noire (a diamond-shaped oval of red to brown discoloration across the whites of the eyes and the corneas, matching the hiatus between the partly open eyelids). When the eyebank is going to collect corneas from one of our cadavers, they ask us to put gauze pads over the closed eyelids, wet the gauze pads down with normal saline, and tape the eyes shut over the gauze. To prevent drying. I have no idea how long it would take to recover from paralysis-induced drying of the eyes… but I know Vitamin A-deficiency-related eye drying is responsible for a good deal of blindness in Africa. [Ew gross do not look if easily squucked out anyway you have to scroll down several pages or search it for vitamin A. Then click on the little eyeball thumbnail pic](http://bob.usuhs.mil/biochem/nutrition/NOTES/) ---
**Author:** ![gabriela](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/db5fbb/32.png) [@gabriela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gabriela)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/12 "2006-08-25T01:04:24Z")
> [@gigi](#): > > In this case I believe the guy is shot through the forehead, and yet the brain looks intact with no big blowout out the back. I guess it depends on the angle, but I would have thought a close examination of the head and contents would have happened. Sorry for so many answers in a row, people - I can read the Dope from work, but not answer it until I get home, and I think of cool stuff and have to wait until I get home to blurt it out. I testified today on a guy who was shot through the head. You know it makes a huge bloody hole with a pulpified disrupted track through the brain, and a great big spill of blood under his scalp at the entrance and exit. I bet they just didn’t want to spend all the money on makeup for a one-minute shot. ---
**Author:** ![gabriela](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/db5fbb/32.png) [@gabriela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gabriela)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/13 "2006-08-25T01:05:44Z")
> [@gigi](#): > > Yeah, while watching I found myself wishing **gabriela** was there to MST3K it. Aww! This is the nicest thing anybody’s said about me all day!!! ---
**Author:** ![NajaNivea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/22d042/32.png) [@NajaNivea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NajaNivea)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/14 "2006-08-25T01:12:26Z")
> [@gabriela](#): > > Sorry, Gigi - musta missed this one! > > I didn’t see Vanishing, but you are absolutely right. If we’re gonna peel back the scalp and get out the Stryker saw and pop off the cranium, we are taking out that brain. There’s absolutely no way we would open the head and not take the brain out. I mean, you can’t slice it up until it’s on the cutting table. And how you gonna look at the undersurface to see if there are remote or recent gliding contusions without cutting the cranial nerves and the pituitary stalk? I mean!!! I think I love you. ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/15 "2006-08-25T01:20:59Z")
I saw an interview on Discovery Health with a British woman who was declared dead three times and colud hear, etc, and spent a day in the morgue drawer. Obviously terrifying for her,especially when it happened more than once. The third time her family tried to convince the docs she wasn’t dead, but they thought the family just distraught. StG ---
**Author:** ![gabriela](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/db5fbb/32.png) [@gabriela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gabriela)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/16 "2006-08-25T09:37:13Z")
> [@MixieArmadillo](#): > > I think I love you. Aww. Just topped my previous standards for “nicest thing anybody’s said to me all day”. ---
**Author:** ![gabriela](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/db5fbb/32.png) [@gabriela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gabriela)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/17 "2006-08-25T09:39:08Z")
> [@StGermain](#): > > I saw an interview on Discovery Health with a British woman who was declared dead three times and colud hear, etc, and spent a day in the morgue drawer. Obviously terrifying for her,especially when it happened more than once. The third time her family tried to convince the docs she wasn’t dead, but they thought the family just distraught. > > StG Now I suppose I need a snarky comment on the National Health. In the United States, where I work, you have to have an EEG, EKG, or decomposition to prove to us that you’re dead… ---
**Author:** ![MsRobyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90ced4/32.png) [@MsRobyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsRobyn)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/18 "2006-08-25T09:50:03Z")
There is a condition called [“locked-in syndrome”](http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/lockedinsyndrome/lockedinsyndrome.htm) that results in that kind of paralysis. However, as **gabriela** pointed out, you need a flat EKG or EEG to tell if the patient is dead. In my reading on the subject, before all that technology came about, it wasn’t uncommon for these people to be buried alive. (IIRC, Mary Roach covered that in _Stiff_.) Robin ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/19 "2006-08-25T09:57:29Z")
Yeah well, it happened to St Therese of Jesus (I think that’s how you spell it in English); her Dad insisted that she wasn’t dead and had to pretty much wrap himself over the uh, corpse, to keep it from being buried. But that was back in the 16th century… not even _la Seguridad Social_ would be that sloppy nowadays! ---
**Author:** ![gabriela](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/db5fbb/32.png) [@gabriela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gabriela)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775/20 "2006-08-25T10:07:11Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Yeah well, it happened to St Therese of Jesus (I think that’s how you spell it in English); her Dad insisted that she wasn’t dead and had to pretty much wrap himself over the uh, corpse, to keep it from being buried. > > But that was back in the 16th century… not even _la Seguridad Social_ would be that sloppy nowadays! Eww. [Hans Berger](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Berger) invented the EEG in 1924. Before that, you had to hold a copper bracelet up to Arwen’s mouth to see if a little mist appeared on the metal, to tell if pretty girls who looked dead were alive. Poor St. Therese. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-autopsy-accurate-hey-gabriela/369775.md?page=2)