Latest news with #pathologist
CBS News
11 hours ago
- CBS News
1 person dead in Delaware County house fire, officials say
A person died during a house fire in the Marcus Hook section of Delaware County Monday morning, according to Delaware County officials. Officials said a fire started at a home on 2nd and Market Streets after 10 a.m., leaving behind burnt debris and melted siding. CBS News Philadelphia As first responders investigated the scene, the brother of the family that resided in the home, John Johnson, stopped by to take a look at the damage. "The house caught on fire from the back, and they said they tried to get out, but the kids got out," Johnson said. Johnson said his brother-in-law wasn't able to get out of the burning home and died. "They had a hard time getting him out of the window, and he was deceased," Johnson said. "He was a good man. He was a pathologist. He worked at Crozer before he retired, and this happens." Johnson told CBS News Philadelphia that his sister, her husband, and their adult daughters and young sons lived in the home. As of now, officials are working to figure out what started the fire.
Wall Street Journal
6 days ago
- Health
- Wall Street Journal
The FDA Presents Its Case for Targeting Talc
Your editorial 'The FDA Takes a Trial-Lawyer Turn' (May 21) criticizes the Food and Drug Administration for convening an expert panel to explore whether talc is a potential carcinogen. You cite three studies that don't support that proposition but omit the 2019 review of 30 studies that found a strong association between talc and cancer. Last year the International Agency for Research on Cancer also found that the mineral is 'probably carcinogenic to humans,' citing strong mechanistic evidence. At a recent FDA expert panel, one pathologist reported that talc particles have been observed in cancer cells. For these reasons, talc has been removed from baby powder, but remarkably children continue to eat it in candy and other foods. Millions of Americans also consume it in medications. Talc is used as a lubricant that allows for easier mass production of pills, food and cosmetics. As one scientist informed our panel, safe, low-cost alternatives exist.
BBC News
21-05-2025
- BBC News
Spalding woman died from severe skull fracture, court hears
A woman found dead in her home suffered a severe skull fracture, a court has Sparane was found by police lying on a bed and covered in blood at her flat in Winsover Road, Spalding, on 26 Simpson, 64, was initially charged with murder but a trial of facts is now under way after he was deemed unfit to face a criminal trial due to his mental health. Home Office pathologist Dr Stuart Hamilton, who carried out the post-mortem examination, told Lincoln Crown Court the 37-year-old had suffered a number of lacerations to her head consistent with blunt force rather than a bladed object. Giving evidence earlier, he said: "It would have to be least four heavy blows, most likely more," he Hamilton agreed the injuries were consistent with Ms Sparane's head being closed into a specks of paint found on her skull were also consistent with a large pepper mill recovered during the investigation, the court heard."It was entirely consistent with it (the pepper mill) being used to strike the head," the pathologist it was his opinion those blows had not caused Ms Sparane's on her hands suggested she had been trying to defend herself, Dr Hamilton added. Small stab wound Jurors heard on Tuesday that police found Mr Simpson lying facedown on a bedroom floor wearing only his trousers and next to a blood-coated kitchen uninjured, young child was also present in the initially believed Mr Simpson, of Nene Court, Spalding, was dead but he was later heard making comments including, "they're coming to kill me", before being taken to court heard he had a small stab wound near his abdomen which did not require surgery and could have been trial of the facts will determine whether Mr Simpson killed Ms Sparane but cannot result in a conviction. If the court is not satisfied he is guilty, he will be hearing to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
Irish Times
09-05-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Irish Blood, Irish Heart: Frank McNally on a Mancunian hibernophile, Sir Norman Moore
Manchester-born and Cambridge-educated, the baronet, pathologist, and historian Sir Norman Moore (1847 – 1922) was in some ways a pillar of the English establishment. But the defining events of his life included an encounter at Crewe railway station, one night while waiting for a connection, with two travelling harvest workers from County Mayo. Moore was able to greet them in their native language, after which they all drank coffee together, discussing Irish history at length. Eighteen years later, one of the men wrote to him, having seen his address in a newspaper, and this time seeking his expertise on a chronic illness. The English medical man helped cure the patient, eventually, and they became regular correspondents thereafter. This is one just example of a deep entanglement with Ireland and its culture, including the language, that Moore inherited from his unconventional parents. READ MORE He was the only child of the political economist Robert Ross Rowan Moore and his Limerick Quaker wife, Rebecca (née Fisher), already estranged by the time of Norman's birth. Raised mostly by his mother and her liberal non-conformist friends in Manchester, Moore Jnr left school early to work in a cotton mill. But he later studied at St Catherine's College, Cambridge, and won an eight-year residential scholarship there, to help set up a school of science, before he was 'rusticated' (a polite word for expelled) because of involvement in a scuffle. Staying with a friend near Ballymena, he discussed Virgil and Homer with a local ploughman. After that, he enrolled in St Bartholomew's, London, to study anatomy, and was involved with that hospital for the rest of his life, writing its history in a two-volume set, published in 1918. Alongside his medical career, meanwhile, he had become a scholar of Irish, a language he learned in childhood. One measure of his engagement with it is that, to help him understand the 11th century Leabhar na Huidri (Book of the Dun Cow), he read an Irish grammar book by a German professor, and was so impressed with that as to contact the author and ask permission to translate it into English. His version of the book was later considered by at least one expert to be an improvement on the original. Moore was also a frequent visitor to his ancestral homeland, a country he approached with the zeal of a pilgrim. On first seeing the Rock of Cashel, for example, he eulogised: 'My mother's ancestor Ceallachán was king of Caisil and when I crossed the plain and saw the grand old rock […] I rejoiced to feel that it was no strange or foreign grandeur which surrounded its old towers but a kindly family love.' Walking Ireland's back roads, he sometimes slept rough. He was in west Donegal the night that, unbeknownst to him, his father died. Many years later, he recalled: 'I slept on a wild mountain ... called Lough Salt. I was ignorant of his illness. I had lost my way and was very tired so I lay down in a hollow and covered myself with pieces of turf to keep off the wind which swept furiously across the mountain. Fierce driving rain followed but at last I fell asleep and when I awoke it was a clear, starlight morning. I walked on thinking of the protecting care of God. My father had been dying that night and I had walked on, as far as strong worldly protectors go, alone in the world. But God has always been my helper and to Him I will always turn for help.' Moore was struck by, among other things, the level of classical learning in 19th century Ireland, even among the poor. Staying with a friend near Ballymena, he discussed Virgil and Homer with a local ploughman and reflected critically on the writings of a previous scholar a century earlier: 'Dr Charles Smith, whose survey of Kerry, [was] published in 1774, noted that 'classical reading extends itself, even to a fault , among the lower and poorer kind in this county.' The `fault', in his estimation, was that it took their attention away from more useful knowledge.' Even when in England, Moore could commune with the old country, something he did on his 30th birthday. 'As I could not be in Ireland on that day I chose Glastonbury', he wrote, because 'many Irishmen spent religious lives there'. Kneeling at what he thought was the former location of a high altar, he made a vow 'that I would always prefer duty and learning to money.' Of his sense of identity, Moore said this: 'I am myself, but I am more. I have received a sort of trust from my dead ancestors.' After winning the affections of his future wife, Amy Leigh Smith, he wrote: 'In giving your heart to me, my dear one, you gave it to Ireland. You are all the world of people to me and Ireland is all the world of land.' This extraordinary man seems to have been largely ignored in the country he loved and has since been forgotten. But he will get some overdue recognition next week, when Dr Elizabeth Boyle of Maynooth University gives a talk on his life and work at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. The event is on Thursday, May 15th, at 5.30pm. More details are at
The Sun
09-05-2025
- The Sun
Firing squad ‘botched' death row execution as inmate suffers ‘excruciating' death bleeding out strapped to chair
A SOUTH Carolina firing squad has been accused by experts of botching the execution of a convicted cop killer, leaving him in "excruciating" pain as he bled to death. None of the bullets directly hit Mikal Mahdi's heart, as is supposed to happen during an execution, an autopsy commissioned by the state has revealed. 5 5 Mikal Mahdi, 42, was shot dead on April 11, marking South Carolina's second execution in just over a month. An autopsy of Mahdi's chest showed only two bullet wounds instead of three from the trio of prison employees who volunteered for the squad, according to the NPR's report. It has been revealed that the bullets injured his liver and other internal organs but missed his heart, which continued to beat and as a result, left him alive for roughly a minute, experts said. The autopsy was filed on Thursday by Mahdi's lawyers with a letter to the state Supreme Court titled "notice of botched execution". 'Mr. Mahdi did experience excruciating conscious pain and suffering for about 30 to 60 seconds after he was shot,' pathologist Dr. Jonathan Arden wrote in his analysis of the autopsy. Arden, hired by Mahdi's legal team to review the autopsy, added that Mahdi was 'alive and reacting longer than was intended or expected'. Dr. Carl Wigren, a forensic pathologist who reviewed the autopsy documents for NPR, said: 'He's not going to die instantaneously from this." He added: 'I think that it took him some time to bleed out.' Mahdi was sentenced to death for the 2004 murder of off-duty public safety officer Captain James Myers, who was shot nine times and set on fire in a shed where he had married his wife just 15 months earlier. He was also convicted of murdering two other people, as well as of carjacking and firearm robbery. The killer chose to be executed by firing squad over lethal injection or the electric chair, as he feared being 'burned and mutilated' or 'suffering a lingering death', his attorney said. Strapped to a metal chair beneath a hood and with a red bullseye target placed over his heart, Mahdi gave no final words and refused to look at the nine witnesses behind the bulletproof glass. He cried out and flexed his arms as three prison staff fired rounds into his chest, then groaned twice more before taking a final breath 80 seconds later. A doctor pronounced him dead four minutes after the shots were fired. Though South Carolina's constitution bans cruel or unusual punishment, the state Supreme Court ruled last year that firing squads aren't cruel - claiming death occurs within 15 seconds. The justices wrote: 'The evidence before us convinces us - though an inmate executed via the firing squad is likely to feel pain, perhaps excruciating pain - that the pain will last only ten to fifteen seconds. 'Unless there is a massive botch of the execution in which each member of the firing squad simply misses the inmate's heart.' A doctor noted in the state autopsy's comments section that 'it is believed' two bullets passed through a single wound. But pathologists reviewing the case expressed doubt, with Wigren stating, 'I think the odds of that are pretty minuscule.' A doctor noted in the comments section on the state autopsy that 'it is believed that' two bullets went through one wound. But pathologists who reviewed were skeptical that two bullets went through precisely the same small hole. 'I think the odds of that are pretty minuscule,' Wigren said. Jeffrey Collins, a reporter for the Associated Press, wrote that he heard Mahdi groan twice about 45 seconds after shots. He claimed Mahdi continued to breathe for another 80 seconds before he appeared to take a final gasp. Pathologist Arden concluded in his report: 'Both the forensic medical evidence and the reported eyewitness observations of the execution corroborate that Mr. Mahdi was alive and reacting longer than was intended or expected." Mahdi's execution was the fifth in the state in less than eight months, and the 12th in the US so far this year. During his trial, Assistant Solicitor David Pascoe called him 'the epitome of evil' and said: 'His heart and mind are full of hate and malice.' Myers' wife, Amy Tripp Myers, gave a heartbreaking testimony: 'I found the love of my life, my soulmate, the partner that my life revolved around, lifeless, lying in a pool of blood and his body burned by someone who didn't even know him.' In a letter written before his death, Mahdi admitted: 'I'm guilty as hell… What I've done is irredeemable.' Despite a final push by his legal team and childhood teachers calling for clemency, Republican Governor Henry McMaster denied a last-minute appeal. The US Supreme Court also rejected his final petition. Mahdi's death followed the execution of 67-year-old Brad Sigmon in March, the first firing squad execution in South Carolina after a 13-year pause. 5 5
