This is a very thought-provoking episode, for what it says about the lengths that people will go to just to feather their own nest, and the extraordinary lengths that scientists sometimes have to go to in order to uncover scientific truth.
The set-up for this episode is simple: there is a bike race, and one of the racers dies a few minutes into the race. This is a real detective story, finding out how and why the man died before identifying who did it, and what they stood to gain.
Before the start, the dead rider was seen drinking a mysterious potion given by his trainer. Other cyclists also drank it, though some did not. The trainer will not disclose the contents of the potion, though analysis later reveals that it was innocuous. The trainer swears by diet and exercise, the special potions, he says, fit in with that regime.
The autopsy doesn't yield any obvious cause of death initially, so Dr Grace must go beyond any test she has done before, and so asks for help from Dr Ogden, who gladly obliges. Even so, the only thing they turn up from dissecting the brain is a small aneurysm, but even that doesn't seem enough to be the main cause of death.
It takes cutting edge science to find the answer eventually, but even then, Dr Grace has to explore beyond the boundaries finally to nail it.
This is an excellent episode in itself, but of course there are many echoes in it of the modern day struggles to ensure that professional cycling is a clean sport. Is an advantage any more ethical because it comes out of the cyclists workshop than if it comes out of a bottle? And how much do we as spectators so demand success that professional sportspeople are prepared to risk everything to deliver that success?
Oh, one final thing, by way of answering the question raised by Dr Grace -the reason pathologists say it's the last thing they look at which gives them the cause of death is that once they have found the true cause of death, they look no further!
The set-up for this episode is simple: there is a bike race, and one of the racers dies a few minutes into the race. This is a real detective story, finding out how and why the man died before identifying who did it, and what they stood to gain.
Before the start, the dead rider was seen drinking a mysterious potion given by his trainer. Other cyclists also drank it, though some did not. The trainer will not disclose the contents of the potion, though analysis later reveals that it was innocuous. The trainer swears by diet and exercise, the special potions, he says, fit in with that regime.
The autopsy doesn't yield any obvious cause of death initially, so Dr Grace must go beyond any test she has done before, and so asks for help from Dr Ogden, who gladly obliges. Even so, the only thing they turn up from dissecting the brain is a small aneurysm, but even that doesn't seem enough to be the main cause of death.
It takes cutting edge science to find the answer eventually, but even then, Dr Grace has to explore beyond the boundaries finally to nail it.
This is an excellent episode in itself, but of course there are many echoes in it of the modern day struggles to ensure that professional cycling is a clean sport. Is an advantage any more ethical because it comes out of the cyclists workshop than if it comes out of a bottle? And how much do we as spectators so demand success that professional sportspeople are prepared to risk everything to deliver that success?
Oh, one final thing, by way of answering the question raised by Dr Grace -the reason pathologists say it's the last thing they look at which gives them the cause of death is that once they have found the true cause of death, they look no further!
