The opinion of experts

The experts are clear on how David Kelly died

Not a single forensic pathologist has challenged the conclusions of the Hutton inquiry

Vikram Dodd guardian.co.uk, Sunday 24 October 2010 17.00 BST

And so it goes on. Despite the release on Friday of the postmortem and toxicology reports into the death of the weapons inspector Dr David Kelly, the claims will continue.

The Hutton inquiry into the factors leading to Kelly's death heard expert evidence and then concluded the weapons inspector had committed suicide.

Not one single party to the inquiry, which was more thorough than any inquest would have been, offered any evidence to the contrary. The inquiry into the death in 2003 was vitriolic at times, and ended up with the BBC and Kelly family joining together in a savage battle against the government.

I sat through Hutton's inquiry, and have sat through many inquests.

Despite Hutton's baffling conclusion that the government bore no blame for pressurising Kelly, his was a more rigorous inquiry into the death than an inquest.

But none of this has satisfied those determined to suggest something more malign was behind Kelly's demise.

Over the years, as new claims have emerged, I have gone back to a group of experts who would be best placed to spot anything untoward, namely forensic pathologists. They are the experts in determining causes of death.

What is striking is their consistency in saying the scientific evidence points to Hutton's inquiry having reached the right conclusion.

The Hutton inquiry found that Kelly, 59, died after cutting an artery in his left wrist, had taken an overdose of Coproxamol painkillers and had heart disease which left his coronary arteries "significantly narrowed".

The doubters, who some call conspiracy theorists, have failed in all the years to produce one single fact to support their claims.

Experts in forensic pathology say that the doubts raised, including those by doctors, were based on partial knowledge or misconceptions.

The critics have claimed that bleeding to death after cutting the ulnar artery was unlikely, and that evidence of large-scale blood loss at the scene was absent.

Dr Andrew Falzon, a consultant forensic pathologist with the Forensic Science Service, said Kelly's heart disease and overdose of Coproxamol meant a smaller loss of blood could kill him than that required to kill a healthy person: "You are going to succumb to a smaller volume of blood loss than if you were a 20-year-old with a healthy heart.

"The heart vessel is already deprived of oxygen because of the blockage of the vessels. With the loss of blood [caused by cutting the ulnar artery], there is less oxygen to the heart. Throw in the toxic level of drug, that makes the heart more sensitive to cardiac arrhythmia [an electrical disturbance] which causes sudden death.

"I'm sure bleeding from the ulnar artery can kill you."

Falzon also said the views of those not trained in forensic pathology, even if they are medically trained, needed to be treated with caution: "People who are not trained to look at causes of death will perceive things differently. It's hard for them to believe certain things can happen."

Professor Peter Vanezis, senior consultant in forensic medicine to the armed forces, said: "These people are more clinicians and are obviously surprised that a person can kill themselves like that." Vanezis said the lack of large amounts of blood in the wood where Kelly was discovered could also be easily explained: "It was outside – it could have gone into the soil."

Dr Andrew Davison, a forensic pathologist at Cardiff University, agreed: "You only have so much blood going around. If you have a heart condition you can't afford to lose as much blood as a healthy person."

Professor Derrick Pounder, head of forensic medicine and forensic pathologist at the University of Dundee, said: "It may be that there are several factors in a death. In this case, we know he had taken more than a therapeutic dose of drugs, and that he had some pre-existing heart disease. We have three factors in the death that are known to the public. The cause of death is likely an interplay between the three."

Professor Chris Milroy, now working in Canada, was a pathology professor at Sheffield University. He said: "I've seen nothing yet that proves anything other than Dr Kelly took his own life in the way the Hutton inquiry concluded, by cutting his wrists and taking an overdose."

Kelly's heart condition made him unable to withstand loss of blood to the extent that a fit person could. The death was "multifactoral": due to the cut to his wrist, a toxic dose of drugs and heart disease. The Dextropropoxyphene he took was itself toxic to the heart.

Milroy added: "It is difficult to estimate blood loss from looking at the scene."

Paramedics have claimed there was a lack of blood at the scene where Kelly's body was discovered. Professor Guy Rutty, of Leicester University, said: "The blood could have gone straight into the ground."

Both said paramedics were trained in saving lives, not in the forensic examination of scenes of death, which required a wholly different set of skills and expertise.

The forensic pathologist who examined Kelly's body, Dr Nicholas Hunt, gave the formal cause of death as: "Haemorrhage due to incised wounds of the left wrist", in conjunction with "Coproxamol ingestion and coronary artery atherosclerosis".

No expert in the field of forensic pathology has to date come forward to doubt that claim. Not one.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/24/experts-david-kelly-death-clear