Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
dead man was whisked into the local hospital's inner courtyard, wrapped in a cotton blanket,
and laid, for just two minutes and ten minutes each, on top of brand-new carpet squares that
sat on new tables in the open-air courtyard. Oesterhelweg didn't want a hint of hospital con-
tamination. The carpet squares received nothing but that indirect exposure to two-hours-old
bodies: no tissue, no fluid, no blood, no rafting cells, no DNA. My romantic, noninterven-
tionist side likes to imagine that was the beginning and end of A's and B's sacrifice to med-
ical science: this gentle wrapping, this brief application of their bodies to carpet squares. But
that's neither the reality of good cadaver use nor good recycling.
For the next two months, three Hamburg police cadaver dogs were asked to show their
handlers which carpet square, among a group of uncontaminated carpet squares, contained
cadaver scent. The most mysterious fragrance on earth was no mystery to the dogs. Two of
the dogs, B and L, were almost 100 percent accurate. K scored 90 percent. That's the real-
ity of working dogs. A few are excellent, while some are very good. (Others are horrid. The
last category wasn't represented in the study.) The small study's results: Well-trained cadaver
dogs can smell the faint remnants of the odor of death, impregnated on a carpet swatch, for
months following the brief presence of a newly dead person.
The study showed, Oesterhelweg wrote in what amounted to scientific effusion, that well-
trained cadaver dogs are “an outstanding tool for law enforcement.” I tried to find out, to no
avail, if the prosecutor had pursued the case. Never before had I wanted so much to be able
to communicate in German.
Every study has its limitations. This one didn't answer the question: What exactly were the
dogs smelling in those carpet squares? They could alert reliably, according to the study, but
what was in that fresh perfume of death?
Arpad wistfully asked me if the German forensic scientists had done a headspace study on
that early perfume. Did they measure what volatiles were in the airspace in the containers
that held the carpet? I doubted it, but I could see why Arpad wanted the information. By the
time donated bodies get shipped to the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Fa-
cility, their decomposition is much further advanced. In the seconds and minutes after death,
Arpad thinks it's possible that compounds such as ammonia, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and
methane escape from the body. Such compounds don't weigh much at all.
They are lighter than air.
• • •
People are spending more time worrying about the possible nuances of training than going out and
training their damn dog. Our dogs are very forgiving, so you want to try working on some source.
See what your dog does. It's not a big frigging mystery.
—Andy Rebmann, 2012
