IN all the countries of the world, there would have been comments about the deportment of the parents of Adriana Younge. But either people are deferring to them because they lost a child or people are afraid to make pointed remarks which are justified, based on the things these parents have said so far.
I will compose another column on this topic with my opinion on how Adriana Younge died, which I believe was by drowning. I support an investigation from the CARICOM countries about all the circumstances surrounding the child’s demise.
For now, I will look at the mother’s request for a second autopsy, even though that at the time of writing I have read nothing about her insistence on it. I saw Nigel Hughes on camera rejecting President Ali’s opinion on no forced drowning with the angry rebuttal that the President is not a pathologist.
I read where the lawyer for the Younge family, Darren Wade, got irritated with the Minister of Health on the legal implications of having a second autopsy. He said the minister is not a lawyer and he should leave such matters to lawyers. Mr Hughes and Mr Wade are not pathologists. It is obligatory for both of them to tell us who the pathologist or forensic scientist is who found fault with the original post-mortem that necessitates another examination.

Now we are entering the realm of commonsense. A cousin, an uncle or the parents of the dead girl cannot request a second examination without offering the government of Guyana the medical or scientific reason for wanting the second post-mortem.
Mrs Younge, as a grieving parent, has the right to express herself about a second post-mortem, but she has an obligation to all Guyanese to inform us why the first examination has faults. Before we go on, let us link the post-mortem controversy to a court case. When an appeal against a court case is made, a technical person argues that the original decision is wrong.

That technical person is a specialist who belongs to the category of attorney-at-law. The attorney, using technical arguments about the laws and constitution, argues that the original decision was bad in law. It is the exact thing with a post-mortem. A specialist has to find errors in the results.
Now an untrained mind can call for the exhumation of a body based on suspicion, which must have some credible basis. Here is a hypothetical example. Husband died from a heart attack according to the autopsy. But the daughter who lives with her parents told the police her mother brought in a drug that she administered to her father.

She shows the police the drug. Police investigation revealed it is a drug that can induce heart collapse. Here is a sound reason for a police exhumation. At the time of writing, I haven’t seen anything from Mrs Younge that she provided to show that the post-mortem of her child had serious weaknesses. I have read that she said she is not satisfied with the original findings and wants a Trinidadian doctor to do a second examination.

But wasn’t it going too far to call for another autopsy simply because Mrs Young was not comfortable with the first? Surely, the state is entitled to an explanation as to why there is a need for a second post-mortem. And there is no other space to manoeuvre but to offer the state the medical grounds for wanting another examination. It is logical to assume that the parents were offered reasons why the state cannot pursue a second post-mortem and they decided to accept the state’s explanation and will be burying their daughter.
But there are political dimensions to the tragedy that the analysts will easily find on doing the research. Was it possible that politically motivated person close to the family insisted that there be a second post-mortem so as to keep the political flames burning?

Two questions need to be asked. Was the first pathologist that the family requested personally known to them, or was that name placed on the family and they accepted? If the name was suggested to them, who came up with that particular pathologist? Was it someone known in political circles and opposed to the government?

The second question is the same as above. Does the family personally know the Trinidadian doctor (who is not a renowned doctor and also has a controversial past) or was his name offered to the family by political players? Analysts have refrained from putting these questions in the public domain, but they are bitingly valid curiosities.