The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "pathologist" ...
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What Killed Arafat?
This 50-minute film was the result of a nine month long cold case investigation into the suspicious death of Yasser Arafat, Palestine's iconic, revolutionary leader. After obtaining Arafat's entire original medical files, Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit, led by producer and reporter Clayton Swisher, crossed continents to track down and interview the French, Jordanian, Egyptian, and Palestinian doctors who had worked to save Arafat's life. Part I of "What Killed Arafat?" was able to easily shatter popular myths about what caused Arafat's precipitous decline from the onset of his illness on October 12, 2004 until his death on November 11th. Testimony from Arafat's doctors conclusively ruled out liver cirrhosis, cancer, even rumors of HIV. The scientific, evidence-based discoveries made in the Part II result from the work performed by a team of forensic pathologists, toxicologists, and radiation physicists from the University Center for Legal Medicine and Institute for Radiation Physics in Lausanne, Switzerland. Working without payment, they agreed to run a battery of sophisticated tests on a large gym bag containing Arafat’s last personal effects. The scientists discovered significant levels of reactor-made Polonium 210 contaminating areas of Arafat's personal effects that came into contact with his biological fluids. When the final results came back in late June, Al Jazeera hosted Mrs. Arafat in Doha to watch the Swiss explain the results on set. Upon witnessing their testimony, Ms. Arafat made a resolute, unanticipated surprise announcement, calling on the Palestinian Authority to exhume her husband's body for testing. Yasser Arafat’s body was exhumed on November 27, 2012 so that the final samples could be retrieved. Whether the causes of Arafat's death are determined to be natural, inconclusive—or even murder—suffice it to say that Al Jazeera’s "What Killed Arafat?" and the resulting investigations and exhumation will have inched the world closer to understanding what did not, and possibly for the first time, what did claim the life of this historic and controversial personality.
Tags: Science; death; biology; investigation; exhumation; testing
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Hiding Homicides?
Murder rates in Chicago have been reduced, with the city citing better police tactics. But a WBBM-TV investigation found that that "the department may be reducing its murder rate by hiding homicides by downgrading murders." They uncovered dozens of cases where cause of death was, for instance, indicated as "Non-Criminal death or Death Investigation," though the victim showed clear signs of having been strangled. This included a particular case where the official cause of death was a heart attack, but the pathologist determined that strangulation was the true culprit. The results of the investigation put the police department at odds with the Medical Examiner's office.
Tags: Muder; homicide; police; murder rates; false autopsy report; cause of death
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The Troubles at King/ Drew
The reporters began with a basic analysis of all the hospitals in the Los Angeles County public hospital system. They found that the most severe problems and violations were happening at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, formed after the 1965 Watts riots to serve the poor of southern Los Angeles. The problems ranged from underfunding to staff misdiagnoses, accidental patient deaths, and racist politics on the hospital's Board of Supervisors. The reporters also interviewed healthcare experts and published six detailed possible solutions to the problems facing the hospital.
Tags: healthcare; doctors; pathologist; Medical Board of California; American Medical Association; medical malpractice; civil rights
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Day of the Dead: The declining autopsy rate is hurting medical science
This article discusses the declining rate of autopsies being performed nationwide, and their implications for medical science. "Doctors are reluctant to request them, scared to discover a misdiagnosis that could lead to an expensive malpractice suit. Health maintenance organizations and government agencies are reluctant to pay for them. And there is a shortage of doctors trained to perform them." The article examines the various benefits autopsies offer the medical community -- from measuring the effects of new drugs to understanding various diseases and other health problems, and the possible benefits to families who want to determine just how their loved one died, and from what. The growth of one Los Angeles-based discount autopsy business, 1-800-AUTOPSY, is also discussed.
Tags: autopsy; medical examiner; coroner; HMO; health insurance; science; medical science; death; deceased; organs; research; pathologist; discount business
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Ethics & Orphans: the Monster Study
In 1939, speech pathologist Wendell Johnson and a graduate student conducted an experiment on a group of orphans near the University of Iowa. Their theory: "Stuttering begins in the ear of the listener, not in the mouth of the child." To test the hypothesis, the researchers conducted a psychological experiment on children starved for attention. Those who stuttered improved with positive speech therapy, but the children who had no trouble speaking were given negative therapy and became chronic stutterers for life. The research was never published and was known at the University as "The Monster Study" for the harm it did to the parentless children.
Tags: stutter; ethics; morality; science; institutional review; orphans; unethical study; human experiments; pathology; Iowa State Board of Control; children; control groups
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Grave Secrets: Breakdown in N.C. Death Investigations
A six-month Charlotte Observer investigation found that North Carolina's system for investigating death is fraught with problems. "Medical examiners have failed to detect at least five homicides from 1993 to 1998, including three in which they had to dig up the bodies to perform autopsies. And errors and oversights have jeopardized hundreds more death investigations in those years." Among the reasons for these oversights and errors: busy doctors rarely visit the scenes of suspicious deaths; N.C. does not require specific training in death investigation for the people authorized to do them; some medical examiners seldom order autopsies when they should; when autopsies are performed, the wrong doctors (e.g. gynecologists) are often doing them. This four-day series utilized databases of more than 395,000 death records in North Carolina and 225,000 death records in South Carolina from 1993 to 1998, and 50,000 computer records from the officer of N.C. medical examiner. Reporters also reviewed 600 N.C. death certificates and dozens of autopsy reports by hand.
Tags: death certificate; forensic pathologist; medical examiner; coroner; death investigation; foul play; accidental death; unusual death; autopsy; autopsies; cause of death; insurance; CAR
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Why are Iowa's babies dying?
Former Iowa medical examiner Thomas Bennett steadfastly claims that adults are increasingly shaking babies to death. But, the ABA reports, lawyers and forensic pathologists find that diagnosis fatally flawed.
Tags: None
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No title (id: 13893)
For more than two decades, Waneta Hoyt's five children were presumed victims of sudden infant death syndrome. Their case was used in research to prove that SIDS runs in families. In 1994, a forensic pathologist insisted that the study hid homocides.. An investigation led to a confession of murder from Hoyt. "Goodbye, My Little Ones" chronicles the saga. (March 1996)
Tags: Lighty CAR Goodbye; my little ones Contest entry Medicine Munchausen syndrome by proxy Health 384 pgs. BOOK
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No title (id: 12907)
Dateline NBC showed that the Coroner's Office was terribly understaffed and its pathologists overworked. Work standards at the Coroner's Office were below those set by the National Association fo Medical Examiners. Dateline's hidden camera video showed that the LA Coroner's office was so overburdened that it had literally run our to space to keep bodies-some were stored on the floor. (March 10, 1995)
Tags: Larson Schneider Bodies of evidence Contest entry 10 pgs.
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No title (id: 12302)
Discover examines pathologist Nir Kossovsky who belives that silicone breast implants can affect a woman's immune system and has developed a blood test to prove it. (December 1995)