Week 4- Fitting in within the system
During these blog posts I always try to include some mention of forensics, this week it will be an introduction into the subject of human decomposition and body farms. For those who don’t know what body farms are and their purposes, they are research facilities in which many of the bodies there have been donated for science and they study how these bodies decompose in their natural states. They have become extremely useful for teaching purposes that can stimulate and act as a crime scene as well as being a great resource for the development of accurate forensic evidence.
There are 8 official body farms in the US and the largest is located in San Marcos, Texas State at their Forensic Anthropology Center (about 26 acres large). For the most part these body farms are not open to public tours to avoid compromission of their research as well as to ensure the privacy and integrity of those who donated their bodies for science.
Today, however I am going to discuss a little about the body farm at the University of Tennessee and their recent discoveries to the rate of decomposition as stated in the article, “The Impact of Drugs on Human Decomposition: What Insect, Scavenger, and Microbial Evidence Tells Us” from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). Most noteworthy that led them to discover this “phenomenon” was the differences in scavenging on the donors, the insects colonizing and differing soil chemistry profiles among individuals. This was a curious situation because forensic entomologists often observe the post-mortem intervals (PMI) with insect evidence, “Guidelines for the collection of insect evidence state that death scene samples should accurately represent cadaver entomofauna, i.e., all life stages of each important species that inhabit a cadaver should be represented in the sample”(NIH). They estimate the age and environmental conditions of the insects, in this case because they didn’t seem to match up with their other data they believed it to be an error and so Dawnie Steadman hypothesized that drugs found in decomposing bodies could have an influence on the behaviors and result in differential rates of decomposition. Forensic anthropologists don’t just reconstruct physical human remains, as their background is essentially a subfield of anthropology; they are also responsible for reconstructing an individual’s life and history from what little samples that they have. This can entail evolutionary origins and forms of social existence across time and environments and by that standard during this inquiry they sought to find the correlations between diseases and drugs (which were used by the donors during their time alive) with the differing rate of decompositions within the donor’s bodies. In order to carry out this research they compared the toxicological drug screens of the cadavers to drugs found in their associated decomposition fluid, insect larvae, and soil samples that they discovered through morphological, entomological and microbial methods. The secondary test was for drug usage in the metabolome, microbiome and the scavangers of the cadavers. For context, the metabolome is the collection of small molecules (aka metabolites) in an organism, organ, etc, and are made when the body breaks down food, drugs, chemicals. Microbiome on the other hand is a collective of microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, and viruses) that live on and inside the human body and often break down toxic food compounds and fight pathogens. So in these terms it was found that the drugs could be traced through the larvae (eg. Morphine) and the developmental stages of the larvae seemed to influence drug detectability, with intensities of detectable drugs decreasing with older larval specimens and so they were able to correlate changes in insect and microbe community structure and physiology with donor end-of-life diseases and their associated drug treatments. In the end this phenomenon and discovery served a good purpose of reminding us that PMI estimates can fluctuate in accuaracy if one is not careful in observing other factors such as drugs.
On a new and refreshing note I introduce to you, Dr. Anton Fries. Through this journey of my senior project I have continuously sought to find ways to show you as an audience and discover together the extensive world and system of Criminal Justice. From the crime, crime-scene, forensics, law, courtroom, jail and corrections. To do so this time around I was given the opportunity to speak with yet another incredible and accomplished individual in the field of Reconstructive Transplantation and Reconstructive Microsurgery. To give you a little context and background on Dr. Anton Fries; Currently at UT Health SA, he received his medical degree from the University of Cambridge and served for 20 years as a medical officer in the Royal Navy (retiring as rank Surgeon Commander), deployed for two combat tours in Afghanistan and during his plastic surgery residency he was awarded the international master’s degree in reconstructive microsurgery from Chang Gung University, Taipei where he also did complex head and neck reconstruction and hand transplantation. Moving around from Taipei to the UK he continued his work in reconstructive transplantation and after working in Oxford for two years he was appointed as assistant professor at UT Health San Antonio. Being able to soak in his biography truly made me admire his life’s work and dedication to this professional field, almost making it surreal that I had been able to speak with him even if it was just half an hour.
Now you must be a little confused as to how the criminal justice system must relate to reconstructive transplantation or even what that term may even mean. Well just to break it down, Reconstructive Transplantation (RT) is a type of plastic surgery that moves healthy tissue from one part of the body to another area that needs repair and restores function, form, and appearance to areas of the body that may have been damaged by many different causes such as cancer and injury. In the case of RT for hands for example the tissues must be attached to the body’s blood supply and the nerves must be connected as well for most efficient use. But of course this medical technique isn’t just limited to diseases and birth defects, it has been a useful method in terms of crime pertaining to both criminals and victims. After learning a bit about his background from him I asked Dr. Fries about his thoughts of working with victims or crime as well as the perpatrators of said crimes. During his time in the UK there were a few cases in which he encountered jail inmates that required RT, in an environment in which they had to be handcuffed and surrounded by guard security he had to navigate his own prejudice and stress. Working on criminals, being aware of their crimes and as a human being just having to digest that you have to assist them became a challenge of his ethics. The idea is a similar situation to the argument of ethics regarding organ transplants for those convicted of crimes, however as the UNOS Ethics Committee opines that absent any societal imperative, one’s status as a prisoner should not preclude them from consideration for a transplant. In the position as a surgeon he had to progressively ease into an objective mindset that would detach from any personal attachment. As for victims he had many encounters that one would consider unfortunate especially through his experience on the field as a medical officer that had to witness soldiers. Soldiers, associated with strength and mental fortitude find it hard to consider the possibility of low recovery rates especially with so many of them being young, they have high expectations for recovery. They are not prepared in that sense for the psychological effects and PTSD that they encounter. The same goes for victims of domestic abuse, arson and so many other crimes, RT is still a rather problematic field in which it has many challanges to success. Since the 90s and progressively through time there have been many changes to the expectations for the future of Reconstructive Transplantation. The most worrying of issues was how efficient and functional the results really were, when reconstructing these parts of the body (reattachment) even though they might reconnect the nerves, the higher up the injury where they reattach, the worse the results are and despite high expectations it will never have the same functionality as it did before. Of course these patients do undergo physical therapy which helps tremendously, however it will never be exactly the same. The secondary issue was the idea of prolonged life. The hope for these surgeries is to help these people to move along with their daily lives, but at some point you have to ask yourself if it is truly worth it, do you truly need this to function even with all the risks of infection over time? It is because of these challenges that less and less of the operations through RT are being performed due to the limited results.
I have attached below resources regarding micro surgery and RT for those interested.
Microsurgery- https://www.microsurgeon.org/
RT- https://my.clevelandclinic.org/departments/reconstructive-transplantation/what-we-treat#face-tab