NY Times Op-Ed: Bring Back the Autopsy
By Sandeep Jauhar I recently attended an autopsy at the hospital where I work, in a room in the basement adjoining the morgue. The corpse, a newborn baby, was lying peacefully, as if napping, on a steel table with rusted wheels. He had succumbed to hypoxia, low oxygen levels in the blood, a few minutes after a full-term delivery. Did he have a heart defect? Had the umbilical cord been compressed? Had he breathed meconium, the first stool, into his lungs? The purpose of the autopsy was to find out. I’d come that afternoon to witness what has become a rarity: the non-forensic medical