A woman calls our ED and is rather upset. She wants to speak to a doctor for medical advice.
After a couple of sentences, it is readily apparent that the woman has been drinking.
“I want to talk to a doctor NOW.”
“Ma’am, the doctors are busy treating patients and they aren’t allowed to give medical advice over the phone, anyway. Do you have a family doctor?”
“No. I want to talk to an EMERGENCY doctor.”
“An emergency doctor would be happy to see you if you came to the emergency department, but no one can give you advice over the telephone.”
“I don’t want advice, I just need to talk to the doctor.”
“What’s this regarding, then?”
“I’m babysitting my girlfriend’s cats and I’ve had a couple of drinks. I found a bottle of Xanax pills in the closet and took a couple of them to get high. I want to know how much Xanax is too much.”
The secretary repeats what the woman has said. She has now caught the attention of me and one of the nurses who are now listening to the secretary’s side of the conversation.
“Too much for what?” The secretary asks.
“Well, I don’t want to pass out and have these cats eat my face.”
The secretary repeats the woman’s statement so that the nurse and I can hear it. We exchange puzzled looks. Then I motion for her to give me the phone.
“You should really call an ambulance and come to the hospital to be seen.” I tell her.
[click] … the woman hung up.
The secretary then quipped “You should have told her to go dig a catcher’s mask out of the closet. That would have stopped the drinking and the cats.”
Word was going ’round the hospital about a stinky envelope dropped off at one of the primary care physician’s offices.
Science Helps Catch A Killer
Monday, April 6th, 2009DNA from the same person – a woman – was linked to 39 different crime scenes and 7 murders throughout Germany.
According to scientific literature, the odds of finding an exact DNA match between unrelated people is 1 in 1 quadrillion. For those of you who have been desensitized by the “illion” factor in the recent rounds of government spending, one quadrillion is 1000 trillion or 1,000,000 billion or 1,000,000,000 million or just plain 1,000,000,000,000,000
Since there are only 400 million people in the United States, if a DNA “match” is found at a crime scene in this country, it’s likely that a defendant is guilty until proven innocent. DNA analysis involves examining 13 alleles from evidence samples and from suspects. If 9 of those sites are the same between samples, they are considered a “match.” Here is a more in-depth Wiki about “genetic fingerprinting.”
DNA evidence may not be as reliable as prosecutors would have you believe, though.
In this article from the LA Times, a database of 30,000 DNA profiles contained 32 “matches” at 9 of 13 loci and three “perfect” matches at 13 of 13 loci. Another search of 6 million DNA profiles from two states found more than 1,000 matches at 9 of 13 loci (article is fascinating read if you’re into DNA evidence).
When the German serial killer’s DNA was found at the scene of a murdered 22-year-old police woman, the stakes changed. A 300,000 euro reward was offered for information leading to the killer’s arrest. Police released a sketch of a man they thought might be the killer, hypothesizing that the killer was a transsexual. Eight hundred female criminals were interrogated. Thousands of saliva tests were taken. No luck.
A hunch by a veteran detective helped crack the case.
The woman whose DNA was linked to so many crimes and murders lived quietly amongst her neighbors, cooked dinners for her family at night, but by day …
she worked in the factory that made the cotton swabs used to obtain the DNA specimens from the crime scenes.
Contaminated specimen swabs, not a serial killer, were to blame for the DNA matches.
See news stories here and here.
And now you know … the rest of the story.
I miss Paul Harvey.
Hat tip to Overlawyered for the link.
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