The Medical Examiner/Coroner’s Guide For Contaminated Deceased Body Management

Prepared by Randy Hanzlick, MD, Kurt Nolte, MD, Joyce deJong, DO and the NAME Biological and Chemical Terrorism Committee and Bioterrorism and Infectious Disease Committee, August 2006. Approved for posting on the NAME web site by the NAME Board of Directors at its annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, October 13, 2006.

The Medical Examiner and Coroner’s Guide for Contaminated Deceased Body Management is written specifically for the medical examiner or coroner who will be in charge of investigations of fatalities that result from terrorism or other events that result in contaminated remains. In some such cases, agents may be used that will require mitigation of environmental hazards and decontamination of human bodies. To that end, this Guide provides information and suggestions that may be useful in understanding the principles involved in decontamination procedures, recognizing that it may not be the medical examiner or coroner staff who actually conducts decontamination procedures.

Posted on this web site on 11/8/06. Download here.

So You Want To Be A Medical Detective

A medical detective can be considered a “death investigator”. There are a variety of professionals beside the police who may be involved in death investigation, including coroners, medical examiners, pathologists and forensic pathologists. This brief publication describes the different professionals involved in death investigation.

Posted on the web site on 11/9/06. Download here.