Speaker 1: Mother Knows Death presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy.
Speaker 2: Hi everyone, Welcome The Mother Knows Death. On this week's
Speaker 2: External Exam, we will be speaking with doctor Jason Bird.
Speaker 2: Doctor Bird is a professor and Associate director of the
Speaker 2: William R. Maples Center for Forensic Medicine at the University
Speaker 2: of Florida's College of Medicine, and he is also a
Speaker 2: board certified forensic entomologist. Hi, doctor Bird, Welcome The Mother
Speaker 2: Knows Death.
Speaker 1: Hi, thanks for having me on, Thanks so much.
Speaker 2: For being here. Before we get started, can you tell
Speaker 2: us exactly what an entomologist is for our listeners who
Speaker 2: have no idea what.
Speaker 1: You do for a living well. An entomologist is a
Speaker 1: scientist who studies insects, and an insect is an organism
Speaker 1: with three pairs of legs, six total three body segments
Speaker 1: exosculpton of course, some compound eyes, and a pair of antennae.
Speaker 1: And forensic entomologists are entomologists who focus on insects of
Speaker 1: forensic important particular species that are in the Carrian community.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that we really specialize in is
Speaker 1: taking this very complex ecology of decomposers in the environment
Speaker 1: and then being able to a explain it to law
Speaker 1: enforcement in a way that they can understand how to
Speaker 1: apply it for casework, apply it to case work to
Speaker 1: determine things such as post more minerval estimations, movement of
Speaker 1: bodies after death where the body may have come from geographically,
Speaker 1: and then post more to movement of remains, attempts to
Speaker 1: conceal post more to handling, freezing of remains. All of
Speaker 1: that will tend to change the insects on a and
Speaker 1: then finally we have to go into a courtroom and
Speaker 1: explain all of that to a trier effect be that,
Speaker 1: you know, just a judge and a judge based trial
Speaker 1: or a jury, and the courtroom is not the classroom
Speaker 1: sometimes a painful lesson. So trying to explain all of
Speaker 1: that to a jury in a way that they can
Speaker 1: not only believe you as a scientist, but more importantly
Speaker 1: believe that your entomology the science can add some credibility
Speaker 1: to the case and making it not overly complicated for
Speaker 1: the jury. So if you can tie all of that together,
Speaker 1: then forensic entomology may be for you.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting because I have little kids, and most
Speaker 2: kids are scared of bugs, they freak out if there's
Speaker 2: a fly near them or a bee near them. And
Speaker 2: when you were a kid, were you interested in bugs? Like,
Speaker 2: how did you get in interested in this?
Speaker 1: Well, I grew up on a very large farm, so agriculture,
Speaker 1: you know, certainly was very familiar to me. And being
Speaker 1: on a farm, you're not too far away from insects, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you have to worry about insect control. You
Speaker 1: see insects all the time. So I always thought that
Speaker 1: they were very interesting, partricularly social insects and their seemingly
Speaker 1: ability to communicate and have you know, hundreds thousands, tens
Speaker 1: of thousands individuals all somehow work together to accomplish some
Speaker 1: common goal for the overall organism, which is the colony.
Speaker 1: So you know, I was always pretty impressed with that.
Speaker 1: And the only other thing that I really had an
Speaker 1: interest in other than you know, the insects, is forensic science.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure why didn't have any forensic scientists
Speaker 1: in the family, just something that appealed to me. So
Speaker 1: I was able to merge those two childhood interests into
Speaker 1: a career in forensic entomology.
Speaker 2: So when you were younger and you didn't have anyone
Speaker 2: in your family that did forensics, and the internet was
Speaker 2: not what it is now. Obviously when you were younger,
Speaker 2: what how did you even know about it?
Speaker 1: Well, magazine subscriptions, you know, back then there was the
Speaker 1: Smithsonian magazine was popular National Geographic. There was a weekly
Speaker 1: science magazine it was Science Digest, well that was published
Speaker 1: of course, had some subscriptions to those. And then of
Speaker 1: course the library. You know, go into the library public
Speaker 1: libraries in the area and going into the science section
Speaker 1: and just browsing books. And not a lot of people
Speaker 1: appreciate it anymore. But you know, encyclopedia sets where I think,
Speaker 1: so you you can look up stuff in volumes encyclopedias.
Speaker 1: It may have been very old at that point in time,
Speaker 1: but encyclopedia's were a wealth of information.
Speaker 2: So when you got older and went to high school,
Speaker 2: did you you know exactly what you wanted to go
Speaker 2: to college for? And what did you go to college for?
Speaker 2: At first?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I always maintain the interest in entomology
Speaker 1: and forensic science, you know, as a kid, I mean
Speaker 1: all throughout high school. So graduating high school, you know,
Speaker 1: time to determine what to do. I really wanted to
Speaker 1: go to college to do forensics, specifically crime scene investigation.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a crime scene investigator. Didn't want
Speaker 1: to sit in a lab, you know, didn't want to
Speaker 1: do chemistry or toxicology, and crime scene was something which
Speaker 1: different each day, you know, outside a little bit of
Speaker 1: outside work, a little bit inside work. So that was
Speaker 1: really my goal was to do crime scene And even
Speaker 1: at the time, really to get on with the State
Speaker 1: of Florida, with the state crime lab system, you needed
Speaker 1: a four year to inter natural science or chemistry or
Speaker 1: physics biology. So I really set out to just get
Speaker 1: a four year degree so I could check that box
Speaker 1: and then apply for some crimson jobs.
Speaker 2: And so when you started college, you didn't really did
Speaker 2: you really know that there was a specialty for forensics
Speaker 2: that you can combine forensics and your love of insects.
Speaker 1: So, yes, I had the idea. I went. There were
Speaker 1: several colleges that I was looking at, you all, in Florida,
Speaker 1: I was, I'm a Florida native, and uh, the University
Speaker 1: of Florida was the land Grant college and you know,
Speaker 1: had the largest agricultural programs and a very large department
Speaker 1: entomology as well. So I figured, well, if I'm going
Speaker 1: to go to college. It's either going to be biology,
Speaker 1: you know, or something in one of the ad colleges.
Speaker 1: And UF has, you know, the entomology department. So I
Speaker 1: set up in a point it and went in to
Speaker 1: talk to the undergraduate coordinator and of course, you know,
Speaker 1: they have to go through the routine checklist and well,
Speaker 1: why do you want this degree? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I would like this degree because it essentially
Speaker 1: puts the you know, four year degree checkbox on applications,
Speaker 1: and I can do forensic science work. And the graduate
Speaker 1: coordinator said, well, and had you ever been interested in
Speaker 1: forensic entomology? I said, well, yo about you know, there
Speaker 1: are no programs in Florida in it at that time,
Speaker 1: There's only three in the United States that had programs
Speaker 1: that you know, I knew about that were accepting students.
Speaker 1: And turns out that the day that I was in
Speaker 1: their office, the local newspaper I had a front page
Speaker 1: article on the university's medical inventory entomologist. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: focusing on his medical inventary work. It was focusing on
Speaker 1: his work as a forensic entomologist. So they slid the
Speaker 1: paper over I. It was front page. I read the
Speaker 1: headlines and read the first couple paragraphs, and I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds like something that would certainly fit my bill.
Speaker 1: And they said, well, would you like to go talk
Speaker 1: to him? He's in his office. Said sure, so his
Speaker 1: office was really across the hall, went in, talked to
Speaker 1: him about my interest in forensic entomology. And then by
Speaker 1: the time I left that day, I had a job
Speaker 1: in his lab. I worked hourly as a student employee
Speaker 1: and completed my undergraduate degree with him in the lab.
Speaker 1: So everything came together because of a newspaper article that
Speaker 1: just happened to be the day I was in the
Speaker 1: undergraduate coordinator's office.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that's such fate, right, So what a
Speaker 2: cool story.
Speaker 1: So I still have the paper.
Speaker 2: Oh dare you that's really cool? Yeah you should. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's like what you got, what started your story. I
Speaker 2: love hearing things like this because a similar thing happened
Speaker 2: to me too. How just the whole thing kind of
Speaker 2: started falling in my lap day to day, just based
Speaker 2: upon all these people I were meeting at school and stuff.
Speaker 2: And of course there was no Internet at the time
Speaker 2: to be able to even know that some of these
Speaker 2: things were even a possibility. So it's really cool that
Speaker 2: that's how you got your start. So's it's also cool
Speaker 2: to tell people that you originally started school just to
Speaker 2: get a bachelor's degree, because the same thing happened with me.
Speaker 2: I just first, I didn't even think I would be
Speaker 2: a college person, and then I forced myself, Okay, I'll
Speaker 2: just get an associate's degree, and then I kept going
Speaker 2: and going. I never expected that I would in a
Speaker 2: million years go to grad school. So you're a doctor, Now,
Speaker 2: what do you have an MD PhD. What did you
Speaker 2: go to school after your four year degree?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So I completed a bachelor's degree four year degree
Speaker 1: in entomology and the medical inventory entomologist. I had some
Speaker 1: very large grants on insect a tractancy and developing repellents
Speaker 1: for industry. And with that grant, you know, he was
Speaker 1: able to provide me with employment and then which gave
Speaker 1: me access to the lab so I could do my
Speaker 1: own research. So I finished my masters in the same
Speaker 1: lab in entomology, got an undergrad uh a graduate minor
Speaker 1: in criminology and law. At the time, I was the
Speaker 1: first person in u's history to crossover between entomology and
Speaker 1: criminology and law. Uh, and I completed that master's degree.
Speaker 1: And during my master's degree, I wrote a grand proposal
Speaker 1: for funding a PhD in forensic entomology, and then that
Speaker 1: grant was awarded. So then I shifted my focus from
Speaker 1: my work from medical entomology and insect repellants and attractments
Speaker 1: over to just purely forensic science.
Speaker 2: I love that. So you have such a great story.
Speaker 2: I love this. So after you finished your PhD, you
Speaker 2: became a board certified forensic entomologist. Was there did you
Speaker 2: have to do a certain amount of a certain training
Speaker 2: in order to be eligible to take that board examination?
Speaker 2: And if so, where did you do that training?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, I mean all of that. So there's a
Speaker 1: there's a written exam, now a practical exam, and then
Speaker 1: you your cases are reviewed, so your case work that
Speaker 1: you have done. Fortunately for me, back then I was
Speaker 1: board certified forends against coologist number nine. That were not
Speaker 1: many even without a board CERTI occasion and you could
Speaker 1: still get casework, you know, because people law enforcement agencies
Speaker 1: just needed to help. So it's it's a multiple pronged
Speaker 1: approach where colleagues peer review your cases to make sure
Speaker 1: that your analysis and your conclusions are correct. There is
Speaker 1: a Renten exam which is technical nature, and there's a
Speaker 1: practical exam which includes insect identification and doing some post
Speaker 1: more emit estimations and report writing on that.
Speaker 2: Can you explain to us when you walk into work?
Speaker 2: I guess there's all different types of things forensic entomologists
Speaker 2: can do. But you know, when I'm a PA, I
Speaker 2: go to work, and if a working in surgical pathology,
Speaker 2: the specimens come down and I dissect them and describe
Speaker 2: them and cut them up, look for what caused the disease?
Speaker 2: What when you go to work? What what do you do?
Speaker 2: What's what's the environment you look like? Is it a lab?
Speaker 2: Do you have cases that are just sitting on your desk?
Speaker 2: Are you working on cases for multiple months? How does
Speaker 2: that go?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So for the entomology thing, I mean every day
Speaker 1: for me, I wear a slightly different hat. But for
Speaker 1: the entomology, law enforcement may drive a case up or
Speaker 1: they may collact and send it in. So we received
Speaker 1: the case, we go through what we log it into
Speaker 1: our laboratory management system which helps us tract evident Then
Speaker 1: I kind of triage the case. I open everything up
Speaker 1: and look at it. Some of the collected insects will
Speaker 1: be alive, you know, so they need care. So we
Speaker 1: may have to set them up in environmental chambers or cages,
Speaker 1: give them some feet water. Well, they may be preserved.
Speaker 1: And even if they are preserved, they may not be
Speaker 1: preserved properly. These insects can still decompose and a preservative
Speaker 1: if they're not fixed first. So I make sure that
Speaker 1: everything is properly preserved, that the live insects are taking
Speaker 1: care of, and if there are live insects, we just
Speaker 1: sit and wait wait for those insects to complete the
Speaker 1: live cycles. We document when the insects change their life stages,
Speaker 1: we document when the adults emerge, and then the insects
Speaker 1: have to be identified. So we have to identify them
Speaker 1: to species if possible, if not to possible, at least
Speaker 1: to the genus. So I will try to do a
Speaker 1: live microscopy identific just using morphology, and you know, if
Speaker 1: that does not work, then I have a genetics lab,
Speaker 1: so I hand it over to the geneticists to be
Speaker 1: able to do some genetic identification of the species. That
Speaker 1: usually gets it down to species for me. And once
Speaker 1: I know the species then I can gather the weather information.
Speaker 1: You have to go back, you know, weeks or months
Speaker 1: to determine what the temperature may have been at the
Speaker 1: scene at the time, and then compare with laboratory data,
Speaker 1: whether it's my own data that I generated or other
Speaker 1: scientists data, and then that comes up with an estimate
Speaker 1: of you know, how old those insects are. And then
Speaker 1: once you know that bit of information, and that would
Speaker 1: be the you know, approximate time of colonization. We call
Speaker 1: it when the eggs or larvae or deposited on the body.
Speaker 1: And then once I have all that information, I run
Speaker 1: it up in a report and then send it off
Speaker 1: to law enforcement and they just incorporate that is the
Speaker 1: supplementary information in their investigations.
Speaker 2: It's so cool. Are there ever times that you get
Speaker 2: to that they call you to go on crime scenes?
Speaker 1: Yes, you know, it's difficult due to my schedule and
Speaker 1: and it's budget right, I mean, they can't have people
Speaker 1: sitting around at the crime team just waiting on, you know,
Speaker 1: me to show up. So I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: my time training crime scene investigators how to make collections,
Speaker 1: you know, if they're properly equipped and properly trained, they
Speaker 1: can make it certainly a reasonable collection at the scene.
Speaker 1: You know, it's procedural at that point, and then they
Speaker 1: sent it to me, and then you know, the expertise
Speaker 1: that I have is getting the identifications made in the
Speaker 1: determining aide. But I do. I mean, the longest time
Speaker 1: I've had a law enforcement agency hold a scene essentially
Speaker 1: was three days. Just took me that long to get
Speaker 1: there because it was out of the country. But they
Speaker 1: were pretty insistent that you know, I get there and
Speaker 1: I do the collections because it was a large case
Speaker 1: for them. But yeah, I mean, if I can get there,
Speaker 1: then I will. If not, hopefully they've been in one
Speaker 1: of my classes before, and to make the collect actions
Speaker 1: and just drive it up to the lab, which probably
Speaker 1: happens more frequently than anything else.
Speaker 2: That must be fun for you to go to different
Speaker 2: countries and see insects that you don't typically see every
Speaker 2: day in this country. Is that pretty exciting for you?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: You see different species, but you also have to be
Speaker 1: somewhat cautious because there may not be as much developmental
Speaker 1: information on some of these species as we would expect,
Speaker 1: and just because it is a species that I may
Speaker 1: be familiar with. We may have the species here, they
Speaker 1: may have it somewhere else. Does not mean that there's
Speaker 1: not some genetic drift on which has resulted in some
Speaker 1: different developmental times and different behavior. So just because it's
Speaker 1: the same species doesn't mean that it's doing the same thing.
Speaker 2: I know that some insects can cause some serious pathology
Speaker 2: if you get bit by one. Have you ever worked
Speaker 2: with a species that you would consider to be dangerous?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you know, we get being in the
Speaker 1: College of Medicine, of course, you know, we get asked
Speaker 1: to sometimes help out with some hospital cases. So we
Speaker 1: have a number of cases where you know, people have
Speaker 1: gone into shot being bitten stung by insects, and there's
Speaker 1: a chance to try to identify the insects pieces that
Speaker 1: is responsible for the death. You know, so through the
Speaker 1: hospital system, that's not too terribly uncommon.
Speaker 2: That's really interesting. Do you have a specific species that
Speaker 2: you could think of that people I mean, obviously in
Speaker 2: Florida there's going to be more insects that are common
Speaker 2: to bite people and cause serious injuries. But do you
Speaker 2: have an example of one.
Speaker 1: Oh, well, for us, you know, the the well, there's
Speaker 1: always the threat of the Africanized be being out there.
Speaker 1: But I mean for us, one of the common things
Speaker 1: that are the yellow jacket nests. You know, they nest
Speaker 1: underground and can make very large caverns, and not unusual
Speaker 1: for someone to actually fall in and nest. I guess
Speaker 1: it's been quite common for you know, farmers, land clearers,
Speaker 1: people operating you know, tractors and bush hogs to you know,
Speaker 1: the way of the tractor collapses in a nest, and
Speaker 1: then due to the depth of the nest, you know,
Speaker 1: that the tractor becomes stuck. Uh, and then the you know,
Speaker 1: tractor or equipment operator becomes overwhelmed with all of the
Speaker 1: stinging insects. And even though you may not have a
Speaker 1: particularly particular sensitivity, you can't survive that many insects things
Speaker 1: when you get them.
Speaker 2: You said that sometimes when you get them to the
Speaker 2: lab they're alive or they're special precautions you need to
Speaker 2: take when you're handling those.
Speaker 1: No, not really the insects that we deal with for
Speaker 1: the most part at forensics are you know, non biting insects.
Speaker 1: Most of the adult flies have spongy mouth parts and
Speaker 1: you know, not not typically a threat and not usually invasive,
Speaker 1: although we we did have a case recently of an
Speaker 1: innforted species that isn't supposed to be here. The primary
Speaker 1: screwware So you do have some instances where you may
Speaker 1: have to take some additional steps for biological control because
Speaker 1: we get cases in from numerous locations and the people
Speaker 1: collecting them, of course aren't expert entomologists. They don't know
Speaker 1: what they are, so they may accidentally send in some
Speaker 1: species that may be a biological control problem. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we just have to make sure that our lab is
Speaker 1: you know, a BL two certified, and make sure that
Speaker 1: you can contain the insects that come in.
Speaker 2: My only experience with insects really working in pathology has
Speaker 2: been getting maggots that are on legs with Gangreen and
Speaker 2: when I was at the Medical Examiner's office doing autopsies
Speaker 2: with lots of maggots, lots and lots, and I always,
Speaker 2: I mean, this is just my thing, I guess. But
Speaker 2: after I go home, even though I know that I'm
Speaker 2: clean and it's all done, I just have this crazy
Speaker 2: creepy crawley feeling in my skin and I have to
Speaker 2: take a shower right away. I just have this fear
Speaker 2: that one jumped on me somehow or got in my hair.
Speaker 2: Do you I guess you never have that feeling happen
Speaker 2: to you work working in this field. But have you
Speaker 2: ever had anything like that happen that you're scared you
Speaker 2: brought home something from work?
Speaker 1: Oh? Well, yeah, actually yeah, we do a lot of
Speaker 1: civil cases as well. It's not all criminal, so cases
Speaker 1: of bedbugs. You know, being in a hotel, you have
Speaker 1: to go to the property and inspect, so you know,
Speaker 1: you're always worry about And did I bring some bed
Speaker 1: bugs home with me? Crime scenes are not always clean.
Speaker 1: Some of them have massive roads infestations, and you know,
Speaker 1: he may be in tie back, but you still have
Speaker 1: roaches crawling all over your tie back and all over
Speaker 1: you know, the equipment that's seeing. So now, roaches still
Speaker 1: give me the ev GBI's Magats and flies don't bother
Speaker 1: me too much, But don't like roaches. Not a big fan. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I used to work at a hospital in the city
Speaker 2: of Philadelphia and we had such a bad roach problem,
Speaker 2: and especially the more is in the basement and they
Speaker 2: used to come up out of the dream but they
Speaker 2: would be in the light fixtures, you know, like the
Speaker 2: fluorescent lights you would see in the hospital, and they
Speaker 2: just were all over the place all the time. And
Speaker 2: one of the secretaries was working in an office on
Speaker 2: the second floor and one fell from the ceiling out
Speaker 2: of one of those lights onto her jacket. It was
Speaker 2: like this huge, this huge scene. They're just I don't
Speaker 2: know what it is about them, They're so gross, but living.
Speaker 2: I live in New Jersey, which is twenty minutes away
Speaker 2: from Philadelphia in the burbs, and I never saw a
Speaker 2: bug like that until I started working in the city.
Speaker 2: And I can't imagine just like having one of those
Speaker 2: things in my house. It would freak me out so bad.
Speaker 2: All right, So let's get on too. You're an educator.
Speaker 2: You're a professor and associate director of the William R.
Speaker 2: Bapel Center or Forensic Medicine at the University of Florida's
Speaker 2: College of Medicine. So I have a couple questions about
Speaker 2: that because I used to work with pathology residents, and
Speaker 2: when they decided that they wanted to go into forensics,
Speaker 2: they would go get a they would do their residency
Speaker 2: and pathology, and then they would go get a fellowship
Speaker 2: in forensics. So most of them they either went to
Speaker 2: the Philly Medical Examiner's office. Some of them went to
Speaker 2: New York or Miami and they would go there for
Speaker 2: a year or two to do a fellowship to become
Speaker 2: eligible to take the board exam to become a board
Speaker 2: certified forensic pathologist. Do you teach medical students like that
Speaker 2: in your program or do you have programs for other
Speaker 2: levels of education like crime scene texts, crime scene investigators,
Speaker 2: things like that.
Speaker 1: Well, we're trying to cover all of that and plus so,
Speaker 1: I mean we are in the College of Medicine, so
Speaker 1: you know, our department of course has anatomical and clinical
Speaker 1: pathologists that you know, go other places and do the residents.
Speaker 1: As you're talking about, we do have residents come here.
Speaker 1: We do go down and give lectures to Miami and
Speaker 1: their residence. That's one of the things that we do quarterly.
Speaker 1: I've been doing that for a number of years. But
Speaker 1: you know, in our veterinary program, we also have veterinary
Speaker 1: pathologists that we teach. We're starting a residency program for
Speaker 1: those as well for the animals. But you know, we
Speaker 1: also teach non non MD bound people. So we specialize
Speaker 1: in training medical legal death investigators in crime scene techniques,
Speaker 1: and some are certain aspects of forensic medicine and forensic mythology,
Speaker 1: so we focus on those who want to be medical
Speaker 1: legal death investigators as well. And uh, you know a
Speaker 1: lot of our students are interested in forensics as an undergraduate,
Speaker 1: and because it's you know, essentially a STEM approved curriculum,
Speaker 1: they go to many places. You know, you have them
Speaker 1: go to ved school on the med school of course,
Speaker 1: it's the normal thing. He'll go on to psychiatry law program.
Speaker 1: So our students really go everywhere once they finish their masters,
Speaker 1: if they don't go straight into employment.
Speaker 2: You're also you have the most impressive resume I ever saw.
Speaker 2: By the way, after I read all the things that
Speaker 2: you do, I'm like, well, I'm such a loser anything.
Speaker 2: But you're also you're involved with the educational program. You're
Speaker 2: the actual administrator for the University of Florida's Vet Science
Speaker 2: forensic program. And I got to thinking about that a
Speaker 2: lot recently in the past month because in one I
Speaker 2: found the case of a dog that was shot to
Speaker 2: death along with his owner and how they used the
Speaker 2: animal in order to collect bullets from him and do
Speaker 2: a forensic analysis. And that really got me thinking because
Speaker 2: I never really I've never really thought about that that
Speaker 2: an animal would get a forensic autopsy two and I
Speaker 2: started looking into it, and last week I actually interviewed
Speaker 2: a veterinarian pathologist who also does forensics as well. She
Speaker 2: does both medical and forensic or necruptcies on these animals.
Speaker 2: Is that what you teach them how to collect evidence
Speaker 2: and how to perform a necropsy on these animals, because
Speaker 2: I'm sure it's done a little bit differently than you
Speaker 2: would do for to look for a tumor or something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean the process is very much the same.
Speaker 1: I mean it's for a legal case, right, You're going
Speaker 1: to go to court, so you want to make sure
Speaker 1: that you're not just doing a medical exam, you're doing
Speaker 1: a forensic documentation. So yeah, we have our boarded veterinary pathologist.
Speaker 1: We'll do the ney cropsies. You know, the problem with
Speaker 1: the veterinary forensics in general is you never know what
Speaker 1: species is going to happen. Right, So with our forensic
Speaker 1: medicine program that focuses on people in your training meta
Speaker 1: legal death investigators, they're going to be doing human crime
Speaker 1: and our vet and wildlife program, it could be companion animals,
Speaker 1: farm animals, any wildlife species. We have a huge program
Speaker 1: with marine mammals now and trauma that it is being
Speaker 1: afflicted to marine mammals and trying to figure out, you know,
Speaker 1: who is actually doing them, what types of weapons are
Speaker 1: they using. So, yeah, it becomes a very different application
Speaker 1: when you're dealing with animals, but that forensic exam and
Speaker 1: the level of documentation that you want to perform is
Speaker 1: much the same whether it be an animal or a human.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was something that I was talking to her
Speaker 2: about how really knowledgeable a vet has to be because
Speaker 2: with humans, you're just dealing with one species. Well, I
Speaker 2: guess it's the same with your job too, and when
Speaker 2: you're working with animals or insects, you just have to
Speaker 2: know so many more things about anatomy and the different
Speaker 2: diseases they can and everything. It's it's just it's all
Speaker 2: just very interesting to me. There was a show, oh
Speaker 2: go ahead.
Speaker 1: No, I mean the harsh reality of that is is,
Speaker 1: you know, you may not know as much about one species,
Speaker 1: you know, like we as entomologists may not have as
Speaker 1: much developmental information about a particular fly species, so it
Speaker 1: may not be able to provide the level of detail
Speaker 1: in one case that we had did on a you know,
Speaker 1: we had performed by another case. So the same thing
Speaker 1: in the vetinary forensic world. You just may not have
Speaker 1: a data on the animal to give.
Speaker 2: Law enforcement what want when you take these samples from animals.
Speaker 2: I know what happens with humans that they go for
Speaker 2: trace evidence and they go for toxicology and just the
Speaker 2: medical examiner look at the microscopy. What would you send
Speaker 2: those specimens to the same labs or are there specific
Speaker 2: vet specific forensic labs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we send them to different laboratories, so the histology
Speaker 1: to different labs, the toxicology will go to a different lab.
Speaker 1: So yeah, your laboratory support for the most part, between
Speaker 1: humans and animals is somewhat divided. Like our pathologist doesn't
Speaker 1: send the histo in toxicology out to the same labs
Speaker 1: that you know, our medical examiner's office does here in town.
Speaker 1: It's a very different support system.
Speaker 2: So you are also an administrator of the Wildlife Forensic
Speaker 2: Science Laboratory for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservatory Commission.
Speaker 2: And it made me think about this episode I saw
Speaker 2: years ago on this show called Autopsy, which was one
Speaker 2: of it was on HBO. It was one of the
Speaker 2: original forensic shows with Doctor Boden, and I thought this
Speaker 2: was a really cool case. It was about this famous
Speaker 2: elk that lived in Yellowstone National Park named Charger, and
Speaker 2: in the episode they were saying that someone came and
Speaker 2: a poacher killed and killed the elk, and throughout the
Speaker 2: investigtion gation on this episode they were showing it was
Speaker 2: really cool. I mean, it was a sad story, but
Speaker 2: it was cool how they were able to figure out
Speaker 2: who killed this elk and catch them and here it
Speaker 2: was there was an award given. I believe to the
Speaker 2: taxidermist that the person brought this elk to is that
Speaker 2: something working for a commission like this? Are these Are
Speaker 2: they the kind of cases that you guys work on?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely. Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, so our
Speaker 1: Wildlife lab is somewhat split. We have a Wildlife Forensic
Speaker 1: Laboratory who will take in cases from anywhere, and in
Speaker 1: addition to that, we have the Wildlife Lab that supports
Speaker 1: the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, and that lab supports
Speaker 1: approximately eight hundred law enforcement officers around the state of Florida,
Speaker 1: and we will help them with a forensic analysis on
Speaker 1: any case they have. Sometimes it is identification of the
Speaker 1: animal species, you know, if they have and to see
Speaker 1: some you know, meat that has been field dressed or processed,
Speaker 1: the sex of that species, you know, whether it's a
Speaker 1: male or female, determined, whether it's taken out of season
Speaker 1: or not. So it's usually species determination and sex determination.
Speaker 1: A lot of time with illegal take, it may be
Speaker 1: a size determination of the animal. A lot of that
Speaker 1: may be a photograph. You know, people like to post
Speaker 1: everything on social media, so even if you're doing a crime,
Speaker 1: then they take a picture of the animal that they
Speaker 1: have poached and put it on social media. Typically with fish,
Speaker 1: everybody likes to hold up the trophy fish right for
Speaker 1: the for the picture. So a lot of it may
Speaker 1: be doing some photogrammetry to determine what size that fish
Speaker 1: may be because there may be limits on size. It
Speaker 1: may be too small, may be too big. So a
Speaker 1: lot of it is just illegal take analysis and trying
Speaker 1: to decide whether that is applicable with the law or not.
Speaker 1: And that's where that stops. And you know, other efforts
Speaker 1: like our vet forensic scientists do and the other part
Speaker 1: of our wildlife forensic lab where gets into maybe mistreatment
Speaker 1: of animals and animal cruelty and how long do the
Speaker 1: animals suffer and all that, you know, starvation cases. You know,
Speaker 1: those are all have to be split out at a
Speaker 1: laboratory because we have different different experts to be able
Speaker 1: to handle the different cases depending on what you're trying
Speaker 1: to prove or what species you're dealing with with wildlife.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. I never really thought of how much more
Speaker 2: complex that all gets with social media and things like that,
Speaker 2: because how do you even stay on top of that
Speaker 2: or there has to be a whole entire unit dedicated
Speaker 2: to just taking care of that type of stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they do. They have an entire Internet crimes unit
Speaker 1: and the investigators, so we just provide them support as needed.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they're doing traditional law enforcement investigations and we're
Speaker 1: just a small part of that overall investigation for the agency.
Speaker 2: This episode is brought to you by my book, Nicole
Speaker 2: and Jemmy's Anatomy. Do you have my book yet? If not,
Speaker 2: you better get it because it's really awesome. It is
Speaker 2: an A through Z journey of the human body and
Speaker 2: everything that could go wrong with it. Get it now
Speaker 2: at thedorramodern dot com slash book. Now we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about something else that you do on your list
Speaker 2: of millions things that you do. This is really cool.
Speaker 2: So you serve as a medico legal death investigator with
Speaker 2: the National Disaster Medical System Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team
Speaker 2: or d MORE Region for and serve as a commander
Speaker 2: for the Florida Emergency Mortuary Operations Response System. That's a mouthful.
Speaker 2: Can you Can you explain to us what these organizations
Speaker 2: do and give us an example of any kind of
Speaker 2: deployments that you've been on.
Speaker 1: Sure, So, the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response System is the
Speaker 1: federal Mass Fatality Teams. Essentially, they are all organized under
Speaker 1: the National Disaster Medical System and historically there's been ten
Speaker 1: regional teams and those teams can be deployed anywhere where
Speaker 1: the United States government needs mass fatality assistants and femores.
Speaker 1: Which is the Florida Emercy Operations Response System is Florida's
Speaker 1: state Mass Fatality team of which I'm the director and commander.
Speaker 1: The two are not related. One of the state team
Speaker 1: and one is the federal team. On the federal team,
Speaker 1: I have been lucky enough to serve as a medical
Speaker 1: legal death investigator for many years. And you know that
Speaker 1: team that's deployed to Hurricane Katrina, the Haiti earthquake, and
Speaker 1: they send assessment teams out all the time. They responded
Speaker 1: to the wildfires in Hawaii, and then the assessment teams
Speaker 1: determined whether a you know, a full response is needed,
Speaker 1: and if a full response is it needed, and then
Speaker 1: exactly what experts may be needed or what equipment may
Speaker 1: be needed. But that is all operated essentially with the
Speaker 1: Department of Health and Human Services, with our federal government.
Speaker 1: It's it.
Speaker 2: My husband is part of the New Jersey Task Force one.
Speaker 2: It sounds like it's a similar type of thing. He
Speaker 2: gets deployed on things. He's been to a couple of
Speaker 2: the hurricanes in Florida actually, and of course he was
Speaker 2: there a couple of years ago. He was deployed to
Speaker 2: the surf Side condo collapse for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: And when he got home, obviously I had a million
Speaker 2: questions for him because he was there retrieving bodies unfortunately,
Speaker 2: and I had so many questions like what did you
Speaker 2: do next? Like who was there taking care of it?
Speaker 2: And he's just like Cale, I don't know there was
Speaker 2: a refrigerator there. We brought the body. It's the end
Speaker 2: of it for me. So is that thing that that
Speaker 2: one of those teams that you work for would do
Speaker 2: in a case like that, where there's going to be
Speaker 2: multiple people that didn't survive an accident, you would actually
Speaker 2: set up kind of a morgue on site.
Speaker 1: It depends. We did the surf side collapse. We assisted
Speaker 1: the Medical Sailor's Office in Miami DAPD. So these teams
Speaker 1: do a number of things. They may help with the
Speaker 1: family assistance aspect of it, which we typically call. You know,
Speaker 1: our microcosm is the victim Information center. We need to
Speaker 1: collect any order data right now. You need a missing
Speaker 1: person's list essentially, and then from that list you start
Speaker 1: vetting it down to who the potential victims may be.
Speaker 1: And then you have to do interviews. Right you know
Speaker 1: who's missing, you know what what if their hair color,
Speaker 1: eye color, natural nails, artificial nails, you know, the whole
Speaker 1: thing that makes that person a person, surgical scars, so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. Get a DNA sample, maybe that
Speaker 1: DNA samples from siblings or a biological parent, and that
Speaker 1: builds up your anti mortem database, and then your post
Speaker 1: mortem database are the identifiers that come in from the
Speaker 1: forensic examination of the remains. We may be able to
Speaker 1: do that in an existing medical examiner's office, which is
Speaker 1: what happened with the surf side collapse. You know, the
Speaker 1: medical Examiner's office in Miami has a tremendous capacity. That
Speaker 1: office wasn't impacted at all, so they're still able to
Speaker 1: use their facility. We just provided people and you know,
Speaker 1: additional expertise. But for like Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Michael
Speaker 1: and Hurricane Ian, where the medical examiner's offices themselves are impacted,
Speaker 1: we have the ability to bring in basically a mobile
Speaker 1: more that has all the cooling capacity, all of the
Speaker 1: forensic stations, all the equipment. We basically set up a
Speaker 1: portable medical examiner's office for the duration of the response
Speaker 1: until that medical examiner's office gets back to capacity and
Speaker 1: is operational. So both the National Disaster Medical Site Stone
Speaker 1: has that capability and Florida has that capability. Our equipment
Speaker 1: is very similar. The equipment often comes from the same vendors.
Speaker 1: It is packed the same, it's often numbered the same,
Speaker 1: and we do that on purpose because if we need
Speaker 1: the federal teams is backup. We don't want to have
Speaker 1: to train those individuals on our system. We want our
Speaker 1: system to be very familiar to them so they can
Speaker 1: come in have all those zero just in time training,
Speaker 1: they walk in that environment and they should feel very
Speaker 1: at home because everything looks the same to them. The
Speaker 1: equipment's in the same spot, and they can literally come
Speaker 1: in and just start to work. And that was very
Speaker 1: important to Florida's disaster preparedness. We are a team of
Speaker 1: about two hundred and fifty people and you know at
Speaker 1: times the DMOORT teams are around twelve hundred, so they
Speaker 1: have much more reserve capacity than we do. So trying
Speaker 1: to interface those two systems is seamlessly impossible was very
Speaker 1: important to us.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. I never really thought that you would have
Speaker 2: to talk to family members and god get that kind
Speaker 2: of information for them. Is that hard for you to
Speaker 2: have to have those conversations with people?
Speaker 1: It is very difficult. You know, they're in their maximum
Speaker 1: time of grief. So we have a special team who
Speaker 1: trains on being able to do these interviews and that's
Speaker 1: really all they do. And then we make sure that
Speaker 1: the people who are conducting the family interviews and being
Speaker 1: with the families and the relatives and friends are really
Speaker 1: never in the morgue capacity. We make sure that those
Speaker 1: two worlds are separate. So we have a distinct victim
Speaker 1: information team that handles all the anti mortem stuff and
Speaker 1: then a forensic science team that handles all of the
Speaker 1: post mortem, and then we have essentially a disaster site
Speaker 1: recovery team who was there at surfside as well. We
Speaker 1: are not technically trained to get on rebel piles, so
Speaker 1: that is where a lot of these others, very specialized
Speaker 1: teams come in to be able to assist with that.
Speaker 1: But once they come off the rebel pile and you know,
Speaker 1: they were in a safe environment, and then we take over.
Speaker 1: And then our specialty is conducting the forensic identifications to
Speaker 1: help that medical examiner of jurisdiction or corner of jurisdiction
Speaker 1: the thing on my state you're in, you know, made
Speaker 1: that confirmatory identification.
Speaker 2: Well, we're I'm going to crime con which we will
Speaker 2: talk about you going there as well. My husband's going
Speaker 2: with me, so I'm sure he's going to want to
Speaker 2: talk to you about this because it was it was
Speaker 2: a lot for him to be there that was physically
Speaker 2: mentally it was very it was very hot. They were
Speaker 2: doing a lot of hard work in the sun, and
Speaker 2: just very emotionally taxing. It just was But he would
Speaker 2: be interested in speaking with you, I'm sure because I
Speaker 2: did ask him last night, do you do you buy
Speaker 2: a chance to meet this guy when you were there?
Speaker 2: But he doesn't, you know, he doesn't remember. Oh yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: But so let's talk about crime Con. I have your
Speaker 2: book Forensic Entomology behind me and I'm going to bring
Speaker 2: it with me so you could sign it when I
Speaker 2: meet you in person. But so you're going to crime con.
Speaker 2: What what are you going to be doing at crime Con?
Speaker 2: Are you presenting a lecture?
Speaker 1: Yeah? For for crime Con, we often will present a
Speaker 1: lecture on a particular forensic topic or case. And then
Speaker 1: you know, like what we did with the last crime
Speaker 1: Con is set up the mock crime scenes for the
Speaker 1: teams to be able to go through. You know, we
Speaker 1: try to make it a competitive environment as to who
Speaker 1: saws the who done it aspect of that, and set
Speaker 1: up some mystery cases. So we're our initial plan is
Speaker 1: to really go and kind of do what we have
Speaker 1: done before when we set up a mock crime scene
Speaker 1: see which teams can collect the most evidence, uh and
Speaker 1: and really get the who done it aspect of it correctly.
Speaker 1: And then we're planning on some of our faculty at
Speaker 1: least giving two lectures on a forensic specialization.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. I can't wait to sit in on those.
Speaker 2: You're you're doing so many things, are you, I mean,
Speaker 2: you're doing crime clime, You're doing You're just in charge
Speaker 2: of all these really great things that are helping so
Speaker 2: many people every day. Are you working on any other
Speaker 2: kind of projects or events that you have coming up?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, we do a lot of grant work
Speaker 1: in research. It's not just me, it's the entire team
Speaker 1: here at the University of Florida, lots of people involved
Speaker 1: in you know, probably one of our most rewarding things
Speaker 1: right now is trying to work with marine mammals, trying
Speaker 1: to be able to get information on their decompositional times.
Speaker 1: A lot of the post mortal rtffacts that marine scientists
Speaker 1: are seeing on these animals, we're trying to determine if
Speaker 1: they're naturally occurring because of the you know, the organism
Speaker 1: the fish or the mammal coming into contact with something
Speaker 1: in its environment, either before death or after death, or
Speaker 1: rather it's something that's human induced that is causing these
Speaker 1: what appears to be you know, obvious trauma. A lot
Speaker 1: of them are shot pretty good, but they have penetrating
Speaker 1: injuries and some blunt force trauma that you know, could
Speaker 1: be ships strike, but it's so isolated on some of
Speaker 1: them it looks like, you know, maybe they're being clobbed
Speaker 1: with some sort of an instrument. So just trying to
Speaker 1: give some forensic expertise and some data to the you know,
Speaker 1: the Breen mammal community where they try to conserve, conserve
Speaker 1: these species and and and solve what could be crimes
Speaker 1: against federally protected species. It is very rewarding to us.
Speaker 2: That's interesting we I think in New Jersey we kind
Speaker 2: of have something like that going on because all of
Speaker 2: these marine animals keep washing up. I think it seems
Speaker 2: that there's a little bit more than usual, and there's
Speaker 2: all this talk of did all of these wind things
Speaker 2: that they just put up or is it causing I
Speaker 2: don't know much about it, but I've been hearing this
Speaker 2: back and forth of it may be causing a problem
Speaker 2: for the ant and then they're trying to just investigate
Speaker 2: to see if it if the timing is just coincidental,
Speaker 2: or if it actually is Is that something like that
Speaker 2: you would work on as well.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, you know, I mean we have single stranding
Speaker 1: events all the time, so very important to determine, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the cause. But then you have mass strandings,
Speaker 1: you know, so it's pathology. You know, you have to
Speaker 1: understand what is natural before you can start to understand
Speaker 1: the unnatural. So you know, we have to rule out
Speaker 1: disease processes, environmental causes. Maybe you know, algae blooms. You know,
Speaker 1: red tide happens down here in Florida, you know quite
Speaker 1: a bit. So you know, is it environmental and in
Speaker 1: natural or environmental and is becoming more pronounced because you
Speaker 1: know our environment is changing or rather, you know, this
Speaker 1: is something that's actually human induced. Pretty easy to see
Speaker 1: if you know the stranding networks out there, if they see,
Speaker 1: you know, a marine animal is entangled in a net
Speaker 1: or anything like that, you know, and they monitor the animal,
Speaker 1: they try to assist the animal, but you know, they
Speaker 1: may find an animal with scars and is that from
Speaker 1: a prior entanglement? Is it from encounter with another marine organism.
Speaker 1: You know, sharks attack dolphins quite a bit and leave
Speaker 1: some very interesting scars on these dolphins. Or you know,
Speaker 1: is it indeed, you know, human aduced with some of
Speaker 1: these penetrating injuries that we see. So we're trying to
Speaker 1: figure that out and then give some reliable scientific information
Speaker 1: to our colleagues in the marine mammal world and marine
Speaker 1: biology and maybe they can help answer these questions for everybody.
Speaker 2: Do you guys have your team, Do you have a
Speaker 2: website or do you do any social media with any
Speaker 2: of the subjects that you talked about today?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we do. I can go to the University of
Speaker 1: Florida homepage and search for the Maple Center So it's
Speaker 1: Maple's Hypencenter dot ufl eu and that has all of
Speaker 1: our classes, our training, and links to our social media pages.
Speaker 1: You can see what we're doing.
Speaker 2: That's awesome and that's great for people. I always want
Speaker 2: to introduce people to all of these different professions because
Speaker 2: they're just so cool, and I think I hear a
Speaker 2: lot of younger people, some of my friends, kids that
Speaker 2: are in their twenties that go to school and they're
Speaker 2: just getting a degree in biology and then they graduate
Speaker 2: and they can't do anything with it. So I want
Speaker 2: them to know there's all these cool opportunities that they
Speaker 2: can do with that degree, maybe with additional training.
Speaker 1: I think a degree in the forensic sciences is it's
Speaker 1: an excellent path for students. Well, to me, it's interesting,
Speaker 1: but if you're interested in anything, there's a forensic application
Speaker 1: to it. I mean, forensic accounting, forensic meteorology, there's forensic engineering.
Speaker 1: It just encompasses so many areas of study, and I
Speaker 1: think it's important to let these students know that mean
Speaker 1: you can you can find employment in it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not just a pathologist standing in an authosy cable.
Speaker 1: There is, you know, a small army of forensic scientists
Speaker 1: out there with you know, an imaginable specialization that they
Speaker 1: have acquired in techniques, and we it's very employable and
Speaker 1: we certainly need, you know, more students coming into it
Speaker 1: because we have to replace ourselves, you know. So it's
Speaker 1: one of my activities and my jobs to talk to
Speaker 1: student groups and try to get them interested in forensic science.
Speaker 1: We have lots of students who have over one thousand
Speaker 1: students in our programs right now, so it's been very
Speaker 1: successful to us. In the flip side of that coin
Speaker 1: is forensic science, in at least in the universities I've
Speaker 1: been involved with in some of the data I've seen
Speaker 1: her for first year incoming students has a fairly high
Speaker 1: attrition rate. You lose a lot of first year students
Speaker 1: because I think the CSI effect hits right. They watch
Speaker 1: too much TV and true crime and it is very interesting,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of science behind it, and you
Speaker 1: really can't get away from the science and the field
Speaker 1: work and the data analysis. The most common questions that
Speaker 1: I get from concerned first year students as well. I
Speaker 1: like the forensics part, but I don't like the science part.
Speaker 1: So how do I do forensics without science? So you know,
Speaker 1: the harsh reality is it's not cut out for everyone
Speaker 1: because you can't get away from a lot of the sciences.
Speaker 1: But if you can get through the science aspect, it's
Speaker 1: a very rewarding career and very employable.
Speaker 2: Forensics is science. How do you I don't even understand.
Speaker 2: I do know what you mean, though, because while I
Speaker 2: was and I didn't specifically go for forensics. I went
Speaker 2: for pathology, but there was a lot of the chemistry
Speaker 2: and learning about moles and doing algebra problems and organic
Speaker 2: chemistry and this and that, things that don't necessarily apply
Speaker 2: to what I ended up doing for a living, but you.
Speaker 1: Have to get through that.
Speaker 2: But a lot of it does apply. I try to
Speaker 2: tell my kids that all the time. With math, that
Speaker 2: it stretches your brain and it helps you problem solve.
Speaker 2: And with forensics especially, you really need to be able
Speaker 2: to think about things because everything isn't always going to
Speaker 2: be how it's presented, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a reason why you suffer through the physical chemistry,
Speaker 1: using the organic chemistries and the algebra and calculastic It
Speaker 1: does have application. May take you a while to realize it,
Speaker 1: of course, but there is an application for it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: physic science I think is a highly suggested career for
Speaker 1: you know, students looking for their place.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that the CSI shows and stuff, they
Speaker 2: make everything look so glamorous and that it's very easy
Speaker 2: to solve something in a half hour. And then you
Speaker 2: go into a real morgue in the city and just think, Okay,
Speaker 2: that medical examiner isn't some hot chick, and this office
Speaker 2: doesn't have any shiny stainless seal walls. It looks like
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies in.
Speaker 1: Here, and yeah, we don't work in the dark either,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, good lights really bad. Yea. So the
Speaker 1: you know CSI and all of this editions, you know, Miami,
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, New York, I mean that it there. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of negativity around that because a lot
Speaker 1: of people think that it doesn't play, you know, portray
Speaker 1: forensic science accurately, of course, and it can't, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it is entertainment. And there are several people have now
Speaker 1: done dissertations on the CSI effect, you know, and the
Speaker 1: unreasonable expectation that sometimes the public has and what we
Speaker 1: can do. But the flip side of the coin is
Speaker 1: it is made the word forensics kind of a household name, right,
Speaker 1: Lots of people talk about it, lots of people are interested.
Speaker 1: But you know, the show CSI wasn't the first time
Speaker 1: we had it. I mean Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 1: and then we had Quincy Medical Examiner or television show.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, each generation has its you know, attachment to
Speaker 1: that type of type of work, and it's a if
Speaker 1: you watch old episodes of Quincy, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: similarities there and how they portray stuff. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean if you get through that and really get down
Speaker 1: into what is it, uh, I think it still has
Speaker 1: interest for a massive out of people.
Speaker 2: I always tell people that with my Instagram that because
Speaker 2: so many people want to end up doing what I
Speaker 2: do as a pathologist assistant. And I say, like, the
Speaker 2: actual job isn't as exciting as I make it out
Speaker 2: to be because I just show you the really cool stuff.
Speaker 2: But if you just recorded me at work all day
Speaker 2: disecting surgical smess, evens, it might be kind of boring,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean, there are definitely fun part for
Speaker 2: me because I'm a science nerd and I just think
Speaker 2: everything is exciting, but I think it wouldn't be entertaining
Speaker 2: to the mass public. That's what I think anyway.
Speaker 1: I amend you exactly right on that.
Speaker 2: All right, well, awesome, thank you so much for being
Speaker 2: here today, and I can't wait to meet you.
Speaker 1: Right thick Air and I'll see you at crime Con.
Speaker 2: I'll say yeah bye, thank you for listening to mother
Speaker 2: nos Death. As a reminder, my training is as a
Speaker 2: pathologist assistant. I have a master's level education and specialize
Speaker 2: in anatomy and pathology education. I am not a doctor
Speaker 2: and I have not diagnosed or treated anyone dead or
Speaker 2: alive without the assistance of a licensed medical doctor. This show,
Speaker 2: my website, and social media accounts are designed to educate
Speaker 2: and inform people based on my experience working in pathology,
Speaker 2: so they can make healthier decisions regarding their life and
Speaker 2: well being. Always remember that science is changing every day
Speaker 2: and the opinions expressed in this episode are based on
Speaker 2: my knowledge of those subjects at the time of publication.
Speaker 2: If you are having a medical problem, have a medical question,
Speaker 2: or having a medical emergency, please contact your physician or
Speaker 2: visit an urgent care center, emergency room, or hospital. Please rate, review,
Speaker 2: and subscribe to Mother Knows Death on Apple, Spotify, YouTube,
Speaker 2: or anywhere you get podcasts. Thanks the job, A little
Speaker 2: w