Doctors raise doubts over suicide verdicts

Doctors raise doubts over suicide verdicts
Experts warn of flaws in postmortem blood tests

Friday September 17, 2004
The Guardian

Miscarriages of justice are "almost certainly" taking place because of a mistaken belief that it is possible to calculate from blood analysis at a postmortem examination how many tablets somebody swallowed before they died, a group of eminent scientists and doctors says today.

Their editorial in the British Medical Journal was written after the death of the Iraq arms expert David Kelly and the Hutton inquiry which concluded that Dr Kelly killed himself by cutting his wrists and taking painkillers.

...

Blood that is not circulating after death is not the same as before death, said Robert Forrest, professor of forensic toxicology at Sheffield University and one of the authors. "After death, drugs which are bound in tissue move back into blood."

The authors write in the BMJ that drug concentrations are likely to have changed before blood samples can be taken. "For many drugs, including those found in David Kelly, concentrations may increase by as much as 10-fold," they say.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1306523,00.html

Lots of information compiled on Kelly's death here: http://www.deadscientists.blogspot.com/

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:kick:

If the blood concentration at the time of death cannot be known with certainty, then how is it possible to extrapolate the time and amount of drug ingested before death? The simple answer is that such extrapolations are prone to considerable error and generally should be viewed as unreliable and not evidence based."

*snip*

"The paucity of evidence-based science, coupled with the pretence that such science exists in regard to postmortem toxicology, leads to the abuse of process, almost certainly to the miscarriage of justice and possibly even to false perceptions of conspiracy and cover up."

*snip*

In the process of stumbling or thrashing about in the undergrowth he possibly sustained minor abrasions to the scalp and lower lip, along with bruising to the lower legs and left side of chest. His demise was further hastened by a less than fatal but more than therapeutic blood level of dextropropoxyphene and paracetamol, and by clinically silent coronary artery disease.

This story is very strange

Results produced by the toxicologist who investigated the death of the government weapons expert, Dr David Kelly, have been questioned by a group of experts.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/story.jsp?story=562643

8 September 2004

THE Iraq war is the main reason we don't trust politicians, a poll revealed yesterday. <snip>

The war topped the poll and was named by 60 per cent.

Runner-up, at 42 per cent, was the Hutton Inquiry into the suicide of Government scientist David Kelly after he was identified as claiming a weapons dossier had been 'sexed up'.

The 'dodgy dossier' itself came third with 23 per cent.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=14619844&method=full&siteid=89488&headline=mistrust-rife-over-war-name_page.html