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The pathology of torture

2017· article· en· W2779369487 on OpenAlex

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

affAt least one author lists a Canadian institution in the pinned OpenAlex snapshot.

Bibliographic record

VenueForensic Science International · 2017
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicTorture, Ethics, and Law
Canadian institutionsSt. Michael's Hospital
Fundersnot available
KeywordsTortureMedicineAutopsyForensic pathologyPoison controlBluntSurgeryMedical emergencyLawPathologyHuman rights

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Detainees may be subjected to torture and extra-judicial execution by State actors and terrorists. But, the pathology of torture has not been well-described. This is due to the lack of autopsies performed on victims of torture, mostly due to the disposal of the bodies of the victims by their torturers. On this basis, the cause of death of detainees subjected to torture is often a matter of speculation or remains obscure. This paper provides an overview of the pathology of torture based on the authour's experience with the autopsies of torture victims. At autopsy, many different types of inflicted injuries may be observed, often ranging in severity. However, three recurrent patterns of trauma that are the hallmarks of torture were recognized by the authour: (1) blunt impact trauma characterized by bruises, patterned injuries, and internal injuries; (2) electrical and thermal injuries; and (3) injuries from stress positions that occur from prolonged suspension. The most under-recognized form of fatal torture are the complications of stress positions related to suspension of the victim's body by the upper, or lower extremities. For example, prolonged suspension by reverse hanging (suspension of the victim's body by the wrists or forearms with the arms extended backward at the shoulder joint) can cause over-stretching and necrosis of the muscles of the shoulder, resulting in fatal myoglobinuric renal failure. It is essential that autopsies be performed on all detainees who die in custody, to determine if torture played a role in death. Furthermore, the true nature of the injuries sustained often remains obscure unless a musculocutaneous dissection is performed. Specifically, dissection of the back, limbs and the soles of the feet, as well as the shoulders and knees is essential to determine if specific forms of torture have been applied. This is especially true for fatal complications of stress positions. Seeking the truth about the medical consequences of fatal torture will raise awareness about torture-related injuries, assist in rehabilitation of torture survivors, and strengthen forensic humanitarian action.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.002
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.003
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesScience and technology studies
Consensus categoriesScience and technology studies
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.867
Threshold uncertainty score0.999

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0020.003
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0020.008
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0020.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.044
GPT teacher head0.388
Teacher spread0.344 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it