Level 4 Reading 8B

Reading 8B

阅读8B

lN THE CRIME LAB Marcella Fierro has been a professor in the Department of Legal Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Medicine since 1973. She is also the former chief medical examiner of the Commonwealth of Virginia. She oversaw the forensic investigation of violent, suspicious, and unnatural deaths in Virginia, and she inspired the character Kay Scarpetta in Patricia Cornwell's best-selling crime novels. Alphonse Poklis served in the Department of Pathology at VCU for almost 30 years. As director of its toxicology laboratory, he worked with Fierro to analyze medical evidence in homicide cases, and often testified as an expert in court. At what point do you get called in [to investigate a death]? We see any death that is sudden, unexpected, violent, or where there is an allegation of foul play. If we have the body before it's in the ground, we deal with it. But often it takes time for an allegation to be made or for someone to believe it. Perhaps a family member has a motive: There's dissension about property, inheritance, a new wife, a child not getting a fair share. Those things set a chain of events into motion. The body has to be exhumed. Then what? How do you proceed? I take umpteen tissue samples at autopsy: heart, liver, lungs, brain, spleen, hair, nails. Blood tells you what was going on in the body at the time of death. [The tissue in] the eye is great. It's clean. No fermentation or contamination from bacteria. Al and I work together. What poisons are candidates? What's best to collect? You have to have a strategy. We'd want to know what poison the defendant would have access to. If it's a farmer, we look for agricultural things like pesticides or herbicides. We need to have an idea of where we are going. We can easily run out of tissue and blood samples before we run out of tests to do. So, the technology you use to detect poisons in a corpse must be pretty sophisticated? Very. I call it the vanishing zero. In the 1960s, it took 25 milliliters of blood to detect morphine. Today, we can use one milliliter to do the same work. In terms of sensitivity, we've gone from micrograms to nanograms, which is parts per billion, to parts per trillion with mass spectrometry. You can find anything if you do the research. Of course, some substances are more apparent. You can smell cyanide the minute you open a body at autopsy. Cyanide works fast—like in movies where the captured spy bites on the capsule and dies... [E]very cell is deprived of oxygen. You die quickly, dramatically, violently.

犯罪实验室 Marcella Fierro一直是法医学系的教授 自1973年以来，他一直在弗吉尼亚联邦大学（VCU）医学院工作。 她也是弗吉尼亚联邦的前首席法医。 她负责监督弗吉尼亚州暴力、可疑和非自然死亡的法医调查， 她启发了帕特丽夏·康威尔最畅销的犯罪小说中的角色凯·斯卡佩塔。 Alphonse Poklis在VCU的病理学系工作了近30年。 作为毒理学实验室主任，他与菲耶罗合作分析凶杀案中的医学证据， 并经常作为专家出庭作证。 你什么时候会被叫来（调查死亡事件）？ 我们看到任何突然、意外、暴力或有谋杀指控的死亡。 如果我们在尸体埋在地上之前就有了它，我们就会处理它。 但通常需要时间才能提出指控或让人相信。 也许一个家庭成员有动机： 在财产、继承、新婚妻子、孩子得不到公平份额方面存在分歧。 这些事情引发了一连串的事件。 尸体必须挖出。 然后呢？你如何进行？ 我在尸检时采集了无数组织样本：心脏、肝脏、肺、大脑、脾脏、头发、指甲。 血液告诉你死亡时身体里发生了什么。 眼睛里的组织很好。它很干净。 无发酵或细菌污染。 艾尔和我一起工作。 候选人有哪些毒药？ 收集什么最好？ 你必须有一个策略。 我们想知道被告会接触到什么毒药。 如果是农民，我们会寻找杀虫剂或除草剂等农业产品。 我们需要知道我们要去哪里。 在我们用完测试之前，我们很容易用完组织和血液样本。 所以，你用来检测尸体中毒物的技术一定很复杂吧？ 非常。我称之为零的消失。 在20世纪60年代，检测吗啡需要25毫升的血液。 今天，我们可以用一毫升做同样的工作。 在灵敏度方面，我们已经从微克到纳克， 通过质谱法将其从十亿分之一提高到万亿分之一。 如果你做研究，你可以找到任何东西。 当然，有些物质更明显。 尸检时打开尸体的那一刻，你就能闻到氰化物的味道。 氰化物的作用很快——就像在电影中，被抓获的间谍咬了胶囊就死了。.. [E] 每个细胞都被剥夺了氧气。 你死得很快，戏剧性的，暴力的。

Is there a personality profile specific to poisoners? The poisoner tries to cover up what he or she does. Poison is the weapon of controlling, sneaky people with no conscience, no sorrow, no remorse. They are scary, manipulative; if you weren't convinced by the evidence, you wouldn't believe they could do such a thing. A case that sticks in your mind? There was this person at the University of Virginia Hospital. Kept getting admitted for weird [stomach] complaints. The doctors were twisting themselves inside out to figure it out. He'd get better; his wife would come in to see him in the hospital and bring him banana pudding. Someone finally ordered a [toxicity test] on him, but he was discharged before the results came back: off the charts for arsenic. By the time someone saw the labs, it was too late. We called the wife Banana Pudding Lily. How many cases of suspected homicidal poisonings do you evaluate in the course of a year? Franky, relatively few... If you are going to kill someone [it's more likely] you shoot them... In [American] culture everything is solved in 30 minutes, so you aren't going to plan, go some place to get poison, and figure out "how am I going to give it?" You're the expert. If you had to design the perfect poison for murder, what would it be made of? I could think of a few things, but I'm not going to share them.

是否有针对中毒者的个性特征？ 投毒者试图掩盖自己的所作所为。 毒药是控制的武器，卑鄙的人没有良心，没有悲伤，没有悔恨。 他们很可怕，善于操纵； 如果你不相信证据，你就不会相信他们能做这样的事。 一个让你印象深刻的案例？ 这个人在弗吉尼亚大学医院。 一直因奇怪的[胃部]不适而入院。 医生们竭尽全力想弄清楚。 他会好起来的；他的妻子会来医院看他，给他带香蕉布丁。 终于有人下令对他进行[毒性测试]， 但在结果出来之前，他就出院了：砷超标。 当有人看到实验室时，已经太晚了。 我们叫妻子香蕉布丁莉莉。 您在一年内评估了多少起疑似凶杀中毒案件？ 弗兰基，相对较少。..如果你要杀一个人（更有可能），你就开枪打死他们。.. 在[美国]文化中，一切都在30分钟内解决， 所以你不会计划，去某个地方取毒药，然后想“我该怎么给它？” 你是专家。 如果你必须为谋杀设计完美的毒药，它会由什么制成？ 我可以想到一些事情，但我不会分享。

♪