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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 06/30/2009 : 20:00:31
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Here's one of the relatively scarce good articles from CNN.com, "Drug analysis a multistep process," by Madison Park. Park goes into just how postmortem toxicology tests are performed. I learned a good deal from this, though not quite enough to do the tests myself.
A taste:Unlike television crime shows in which machines can instantly spit out results, toxicology testing to determine what drugs are in a person's body can be a long and painstaking process.
For toxicology screenings, blood samples are drawn from the leg and heart, as drugs can circulate around the body.
The Los Angeles County coroner's office estimates that toxicology tests on the body of Michael Jackson could take six to eight weeks. The results are needed to determine the singer's cause of death, a spokesman for the coroner said. The singer's autopsy last week was inconclusive, although officials said there were no indications of external trauma or foul play.
It's not as if "you go and buy a pregnancy test and drop urine on it, " said Dr. Yale Caplan, the former chief toxicologist for the state of Maryland, who is now a consultant for federal agencies. "Forensic testing is much, much more complicated.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
Edited by - HalfMooner on 06/30/2009 20:21:08
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How Jackson's toxicology tests will be done
