|
There is an interesting story in today's paper about a wrongful death suit field against Ford Motors on behalf of a Cape May county dentist. Dr. Eric Thomas maintains that his wife was killed by a deploying air bag when the Ford Explorer she was driving hit a pole. Thomas has several medical experts, including the Cape May County Medical Examiner say the death was "accidental and was caused by blunt force trauma with asphyxia." The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration conducted their own independent analysis of the accident and came to the same conclusion; death was caused by a deploying air bag. Now, here's where things get interesting. Ford hired their own medical experts and their experts say that the woman was killed in "a struggle and strangulation". They go on to suggest that Dr. Thomas is to blame.
Is Ford really that cavalier that they would make such an outrageous counter claim just to get out of paying a wrongful death suit. I realize that a case like this would then open Ford Motors, and indeed, all the major car makers to a flood of similar cases. But still this is a pretty serious claim to make unless they have some type of evidence.
Ordinarily, I would say that these experts that Ford has hired are just shills who would say anything under oath to get paid by Ford. But one of these experts is Dr. Micheal Baden, Chief Forensic Pathologist of New York. He was in charge of the pathology investigation into the deaths of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King for the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations's. He is also featured on the HBO series Autopsy: Voices from Beyond the Grave. I friggin' love this show. If you haven't seen it, it's about cases where forensic pathologists are called in to figure out how someone died. It is truly a fascinating show, but there are two cases that stick out in my mind.
The fist case happened right here in New Jersey. A man and his son were hiking and found a large bone on the edge of a swamp. They couldn't figure out what kind animal the bone had come from so the man took it to a vet. The vet said that it didn't come from an animal but that he thought it was a human bone. They reported it to the police who sent a force back into the swamp to recover as many of the remains, and any other clues, as they could find so they could at least identify the body. They didn't find much, but during the search on of the workers found a small plastic bag. Dr. Baden asked to see the bag and it turns out, the bag was actually an empty breast implant. And unknown to me, all breast implants are uniquely numbered. It was easy from there to discover that the victim was in fact a woman who was missing for 7 years. They confronted her former boyfriend with the evidence and he confessed and was convicted of murder.
The second case was even more disgusting and fascinating. At the end of August, residents of an apartment building were complaining about the smell from one of the units where a woman lived alone. The police were called in and sure enough, there was a badly decomposed body in the bathtub. August in New York, people. But was the death accidental or suicide? Dr. Baden was called in and looked around (yuk). He then hit upon an idea. There were many maggots on the body and in the "water" of the bathtub. He took some back to his lab, stuck them in the blender and tested the result. Turns out there was a deadly high concentration of Secondal in the maggot mixture. He concluded that it was a suicide.
The point of all this is that if this guy says that this dentist killed his wife, there's probably a good chance he killed her.
I have to go back for another sleep test tomorrow. Except this time I get to have an additional apparatus strapped to my mouth. It's called a CPAP machine and I don't know what those initials stand for. It basically forces (gently) air down your windpipe to stop your throat from closing so you can breath instead of snore. It turns out that during my last sleep test, I stopped breathing an average of 30 times every hour. Which can't be considered good at all. Luckily, the doctor said I have a good resting heart rate and an 80% oxygen saturation level, so that even when I wasn't breathing, I really wasn't yet in any danger. But still. I'm ready to have this operation now
I am hoping to incorporate some type of chart or something to track my exercise and weight loss progress. I just have to get off my lazy ass and do it. You will also notice that I haven't yet improved beyond the basic organization of this site, nor have I scanned any more photos. What is this big letter on my forehead? Oh... it's an "L".
|
