Âé¶¹´«Ã½

Post-mortem drug test errors are increasing

By James Randerson

13 March 2004

A TECHNIQUE for inferring how much of a drug a patient has taken may be putting innocent people behind bars. The problem seems to be that doctors are incorrectly applying the method to corpses, in a bid to establish how much of a drug a deceased person took, or was given, before their death. That error can result in vastly inflated readings.

“There is no relationship between what you find in a living person and what you find in a dead person,” Bruce Goldberger, vice-president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and editor of the Journal of Analytical Toxicology told Âé¶¹´«Ã½.…

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