On Thu, 21 Feb 2002, J. Bryan Blundell wrote:

> Just to add to the grossness of all of this. In my pre-med days,
> when working in the operating rooms of a Washington, DC hospital,
> I use to take lunch in the Tissue Lab so that I could watch
> autopsies/postmortems. Even now 30 years later, when  I smell
> formaldehyde,  the image of the Tissue Lab pops into my mind.
>
> Lunch anyone?

Some years ago I recall seeing a memorable scene in a TV crime series,
probably "Hill Street Blues."  A rookie cop entered an autopsy lab just as
the pathologists, each hard at work on a different table, were calling out
their sandwich orders for lunch.

But very much agreed that post-disaster rescue and cleanup workers are
subject to PTSD.

Some years back, when I was at the MSU School of Criminal Justice, a
British investigator of aircraft disasters gave a presentation and slide
show about the Pan Am explosion and crash in Lockerbie.  We the public can
look away from the most gruesome stuff, he said.  The problem for the
people whose job it is to pick up the body parts is that they don't get to
look away.

Fortunately, the Scots who organized the Lockerbie cleanup were very much
aware of this problem, and set out from the beginning to help people with
it.  I hope the folks in charge of the Ground Zero debris field are taking
as good care of the workers there.

---
Lawrence Kestenbaum, [log in to unmask]
The Political Graveyard, http://politicalgraveyard.com
Mailing address: P.O. Box 2563, Ann Arbor MI 48106

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