Pathologist

Jill Pengelley

Forensic pathologist Roger Byard knows the human body inside and out. He has performed autopsies on more than 2800 adults and 600 children.

He worked on the infamous South Australian Snowtown bodies-in-barrels murder case case in 1999, SA’s Whyalla Airlines crash in 2000 and the Bali bombings in 2002.

After almost 30 years in medicine, he thought he was well equipped to deal with death but nothing could have prepared him for the situation he encountered in the wake of the 2004 Asian tsunami.

“Bodies were brought in on top of bodies in an almost never-ending stream,” he says. “For nights after the tsunami experience, I dreamed the bodies were coming back from the dead.

“It was OK while you are actually doing the work. It’s when you get home and think ‘What have I seen?’ – these people need to be grieved for. Why can’t the pathologist do it as well?

“People often don’t think of pathologists as normal doctors and often perceive us to be much more detached than we really are.”

A specialist forensic pathologist at Forensic Science SA, Professor Byard, 53, also is professor of pathology at the University of Adelaide.

He studied medicine in Tasmania and general practice in Canada before moving into pathology. He was based at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital from 1989 to 1998 in Adelaide and contributed a lot of work to the prevention of childhood deaths.

Families sometimes would come to him seeking reassurances about the autopsy process.

At Forensic Science SA, half his caseload is natural deaths, followed by suicides, then vehicle accidents, with homicides the smallest part.

He says there is “tremendous scope” for publishing and research in the pathology field. He is on his third edition of a book about sudden death in the young, which looks at all causes of death in people under 30. He says the next 10 years of his career will be the most important, with more publishing to be done.

Professor Byard has published more than 400 papers, 40 chapters and several books.

In 2004, he was awarded a Public Service Medal for outstanding service to pediatric pathology and also received a medal from the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia for his expertise and efforts following the 2002 Bali bombing.

In 2005, he was awarded an honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia for contributions to pediatric forensic pathology nationally and globally.

In 2006, he received the Humanitarian Overseas Service Medal for work in Thailand. In July this year, he also was honoured with an Australian Federal Police Operations Medal for work after the Bali bombings and the tsunami. While disaster-victim identification has comprised some of his work, particularly in recent years, Professor Byard is one of only a few doctors in Australia with both forensic and pediatric pathology training.

It is his work related to sudden infant death syndrome for which he is most noted in the field.

“You don’t forget these children,” he says. “We have come a long way over the past 20 years and much of this as a result of what we have learned from studying individual cases.

“Pathology forms the whole basis of medicine. Even if it’s just a heart attack, why did they die today and not yesterday? Did they die with this or from this? Why does one baby die of sudden infant death syndrome and not another?”

He says the answers uncovered in pathology play a key role in prevention of illness and accidents.

“You think you have seen it all and you have this sort of armour, but then a case will get through to you,” he says. “My career makes or breaks me at dinner parties. People are either drawn to me because of what they think I do or they stay away.

“We need to break down the stereotype of pathology as being a morbid sterile career. It’s quite the opposite.”

“Pathology is integral in giving people closure,” he says. “Like any doctor, I have patients. The only difference is not all of mine are alive.

“The important thing is that each patient, living or dead, is treated with respect,” Professor Byard said.