- The piece discusses the importance of death investigators and their role in determining the cause and manner of death.
- Autopsy results have significant implications, including identifying trends in substance abuse and detecting the spread of infectious diseases.
- However, there are instances of misconduct and inadequate funding in the death investigation system.
- The system is divided between coroners and medical examiners, with medical examiners requiring medical training while coroners are often elected officials with no medical qualifications.
- Conflicts of interest can arise when coroners also hold positions in law enforcement.
- Medical organizations have called for the abolition of the coroner system since 1857.
- The medical examiner system is not without its flaws, as evidenced by instances of misconduct and incompetence.

- There is a shortage of medical examiners in the United States, particularly forensic pathologists.
- The lack of staffing and the opioid crisis have overwhelmed the system, leading to outsourcing of autopsies to private contractors.
- One example is Sean Parcells, who is not a forensic pathologist and has been accused of illegal autopsies and lying about his credentials.
- Parcells' autopsy facilities are poorly organized and lack proper refrigeration.
- The flawed death investigation system has serious consequences, including compromised murder investigations and delayed death certificates.
- To address these issues, there needs to be more funding and incentives to attract medical students to become forensic pathologists.
- The cost of improving the system is relatively low compared to other expenses.
- It is important to address these issues to ensure proper death investigations and support for families.

- The piece discusses the importance of improving the death investigation system in the country.
- It mentions celebrities like Beyoncé, Ted Danson, and Glenn Close, highlighting the absurdity of them ending up in a poorly managed autopsy dungeon or having their organs eaten by a dog.
- The narrator argues that Glenn Close deserves two Oscars and not to have her spleen eaten by a dog.
- Tracy Morgan adds his voice, emphasizing the need for proper death investigations and expressing his desire not to end up on someone's autopsy table or have his brains played with.
- Both Tracy Morgan and the narrator urge people to contribute $3.75 to save Glenn Close's spleen and improve the death investigation system.

- The text discusses the importance of death investigators in determining cause and manner of death.
- Autopsy results have implications for identifying trends in substance abuse and detecting infectious diseases.
- Issues in the death investigation system include misconduct and inadequate funding.
- The system is divided between coroners and medical examiners, with conflicts of interest arising when coroners also hold positions in law enforcement.
- Medical organizations have called for the abolition of the coroner system since 1857.
- The medical examiner system also has flaws, such as instances of misconduct and incompetence.
- There is a shortage of medical examiners, particularly forensic pathologists, in the United States.
- The lack of staffing and the opioid crisis have led to outsourcing of autopsies to private contractors.
- The flawed death investigation system has consequences for murder investigations and death certificates.
- To address these issues, more funding and incentives are needed to attract medical students to become forensic pathologists.
- Improving the system is relatively low-cost compared to other expenses.
- The importance of proper death investigations and support for families is emphasized.
- Celebrities like Beyoncé, Ted Danson, and Glenn Close are mentioned to highlight the absurdity of them being in a poorly managed autopsy facility or having their organs eaten by a dog.
- Tracy Morgan also emphasizes the need for proper death investigations and expresses his desire not to end up on an autopsy table.
- Both Tracy Morgan and the narrator urge people to contribute $3.75 to save Glenn Close's spleen and improve the death investigation system.

America’s system for conducting death investigations is a mess. John Oliver explains why we should all be a little more concerned about fixing it.

Connect with Last Week Tonight online... 

Subscribe to the Last Week Tonight YouTube channel for more almost news as it almost happens: www.youtube.com/lastweektonight 

Find Last Week Tonight on Facebook like your mom would: www.facebook.com/lastweektonight 

Follow us on Twitter for news about jokes and jokes about news: www.twitter.com/lastweektonight 

Visit our official site for all that other stuff at once: www.hbo.com/lastweektonight

It's 1 of the few things in life that you can't avoid, along with taxes and plugging in a flash drive upside down on the first try.

Specifically, this story is about the people who investigate deaths when they happen.

And if you're thinking, I don't want to see that on TV, are you completely sure about that?

Because death investigators aren't just supporting characters on some of the most popular shows, like Law & Order SVU, CSI, and NCIS.

Every once in a while, they even get a show of their own.

Smart is always better when it's partnered with Sexy, Rizzoli & Isles.

I'm New York City's top medical examiner.

Yes, forever, which is also precisely the wrong answer to the question, how long was that show on television?

But It's not just TV death investigators who are very busy.

In real life, every year, about 2.8 million Americans die.

And most of the time, a physician is the 1 who writes what happened to them on the death certificate.

But, if someone dies under suspicious or unnatural circumstances, their body may be sent for further examination and possibly a forensic autopsy.

That's what happens to around half a million bodies each year.

And those investigations are incredibly important.

A death certificate isn't like a degree from USC.

--AUDIENCE LAUGHING- Autopsy results have huge implications.

Now, there's the obvious 1, like determining whether someone has been killed, and if so, how.

But, they also help identify new trends in substance abuse.

They warn us about defective products, and they can sound the alarm when they spot the spread of an infectious disease.

And people who work in this field take that responsibility seriously.

I mean, we're on the front line of what's being done, what people are dying of.

We see it every day, and we notice a trend pretty quickly.

So we like to get that information out to the public as soon as possible so that other people are aware of what's going on.

Right, that's a very important point about the public health role of her office, only slightly undercut by the skeleton of Santa Claus behind her, who it seems for some reason died with his dick in a box.

And while it would be great if those autopsies were always performed and overseen responsibly, as local news regularly shows us, that is by no means the case.

Tucked away in a storage unit in Pensacola, authorities found more than 100 human organs.

The renter of the unit, former medical examiner Michael Berkland.

The family of an elderly murder victim is not happy.

They found out that 2 now former GBI employees took a picture holding the dismembered head of their loved 1.

We can't show you that picture because it is too graphic, so we're only showing you part of it.

Shelly took the Marine's brain home with him to Virginia, removing it from a jar and letting his kids play with it while his wife took pictures.

So, that's an appalling story for a number of reasons, but most of all, why did his wife take pictures?

Jackson and Baby Timothy handling a brain.

Daddy's so good to them, always bringing home a new organ for them to molest.

Hashtag growing boys, hashtag God is good.

-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ And look, while those are just individual examples of what can go wrong, The problems are much broader, with reports finding many death investigation facilities are antiquated and in need of repair or replacement.

And given how critically important those facilities are, it is shocking how often they're funded as an afterthought.

Government provides virtually no funding to either medical examiners or coroners.

1 of their grants was for 1 office to get a new refrigerator because their current refrigerator was closed by a belt.

I myself have worked in an office where it was a converted garage with a single light dangling from the roof.

A single light bulb over my autopsy table.

If I've learned anything from horror movies, it's that when you see a room containing 1 dead person, 1 alive person, and 1 light bulb, That's a room that's about to contain 2 dead people and 1 light bulb.

So tonight, let's talk about our death investigation system.

Specifically, how it works, why it's such a mess, and what we can do about it.

And before we go any further, you should know that depending on where you live or indeed die, you could wind up funneled into 1 of 2 systems.

Around two-thirds of the country's death investigation offices are overseen by coroners, while medical examiners oversee the rest.

Now, you might think that those are the same thing, And they do have essentially the same job.

They're responsible for deciding whether to have someone conduct an autopsy and then using it to rule on the cause and the manner of death.

But there is a key difference between them.

When it comes to qualifications in particular, While medical examiners are required to be doctors, coroners are usually not medically trained at all.

In fact, in Georgia, out of 154 coroners, only 1 is a physician, while the others include grocers, farmers, handymen, and hairdressers.

I mean, no disrespect to hairdressers, but some have been known to drop the ball from time to time.

And if you are wondering how the hell grocers and hairdressers became coroners, In Georgia, as in much of the country, coroners are actually elected.

And the bar to run for the job can be very low.

In fact, in Arkansas, there is barely a bar at all.

You can run and be elected with 0 medical knowledge, anatomical training, or official certification of any kind.

You cannot be a felon, and you're electable.

Both those people are eligible to be, and indeed are, coroners in Arkansas.

-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ And having elected officials with no medical training signing off on death certificates is frankly weird enough before you factor in the potential for some huge conflicts of interest.

In some jurisdictions, the coroner is also the county sheriff, and that has led to some serious problems.

In California, 1 doctor quit a county coroner's office, claiming that the coroner slash sheriff there had repeatedly interfered in cases where the police had used deadly force.

Doctor Bennett Omalu, renowned for his expertise on concussions, accused San Joaquin County Sheriff and Coroner Steve Moore of trying to change autopsy findings in shootings involving his officers.

It is hard to trust a death certificate in a death involving police officers when the guy signing it seems to have an active interest in the police not being culpable.

It is also hard to trust it when the guy signing it looks like Marlon Bundo made a wish to become a real boy and it backfired horribly.

Now, that sheriff denied doing anything improper, but they've since taken coroner duties away from the sheriff's office, which is good, because you can't have any suggestion of coziness between death investigators and law enforcement.

In New Orleans, their coroner for decades was Frank Minyard, who was criticized for frequently finding that people who died in police custody had suffered accidents.

And when he was confronted over 1 case in particular, he got pretty annoyed.

When the body of Henry Glover was found in this burned-out car, evidence pointed to police officers being responsible for his death.

But coroner Mignard did not classify it as a homicide.

And so there was no criminal investigation.

There's no way I can say that that is a homicide.

There's no way of telling how, why this man died.

-♪♪ Except there absolutely is a way to tell how that man died.

A medical investigation into his death, which happens to be your exact job.

It's like hearing a clown say, look, there is no way to twist this long skinny balloon into the shape of a dog or a hat.

If that's true, what exactly is the use of you other than psychologically damaging children for the rest of their lives?

And incidentally, that case was later reclassified as a homicide because of course it was.

And when you take all of this together, it is no wonder that medical organizations have been calling for the coroner system to be abolished since 1857.

Arguing that the person appointed should be a doctor in medicine.

Essentially, the medical examiner system, which instinctively does sound much better, doesn't it?

Although you should know, even this system is not perfect.

Remember the place where staff posed for photos with a severed head?

The guy who took the brain home for his kids to play with, he was and still is a medical examiner.

And that's not even mentioning the medical examiner at the center of the most fantastic 2020 interview of all time.

The other charge is that your dog ate 1 of the body's spleen and then he also ate a kidney.

It's never happened to me in an ABC News interview before or since, but Charles Harlan fell completely silent.

I know he's not used to dealing with the living, but playing dead is just not a legitimate move here.

-♪ The problem is, though, Good medical examiners can be hard to find because it's not a job that many doctors want.

You've already seen the problems of underinvestment in the facilities, but on top of that, state-funded medical examiners make around half the salary they could in other medical specialties, with little potential for tips from satisfied clients.

And that is just if you're happy with any doctor in the job.

The best case scenario is to have board certified forensic pathologists running these offices and performing autopsies.

But that is not going to happen any time soon, because there is a dire shortage of those.

In fact, there are only 500 of them currently practicing in the whole United States, which is less than half the recommended number.

And when you combine this staffing shortage with the current opioid crisis, causing an increase in bodies that need examining, you get a system that is pushed well past its breaking point.

In New Jersey a few years back, their acting state medical examiner resigned in frustration, citing staff shortages as 1 of the key reasons.

I felt as I walked in the door, they didn't have enough personnel to handle the load.

You don't want to come to a family, say, I'm sorry, ma'am, I'm sorry, Mrs.

Smith, we couldn't do the investigation that we wanted because we don't have the resources.

He wanted to serve people well, but he couldn't.

And things have frankly not got much better in New Jersey since.

So for the time being, if you do find yourself dying there, please write down whatever is killing you on a Post-it note and stick it to your chest.

You'd really be doing that overstretched investigators are solid.

The resources crunch is so bad that some offices wind up outsourcing work to private contractors, and this is where this story gets absolutely incredible.

Because let me just introduce you to 1 terrible example of this.

In Missouri and Kansas, a number of coroner's offices wound up hiring a company belonging to this man, Sean Parcells, to perform autopsies.

After all, he's a guy whose actual license plate says autopsy.

They don't just hand that out to anyone with a valid government-issued photo ID and $45.

Unfortunately, though, there were a few problems with Parcells.

For starters, he's not a forensic pathologist.

And while he maintains that his firm employs doctors, he's been accused of performing illegal autopsies himself.

And he has frankly left a long trail of problems behind him.

Parcells has been accused of botching a murder investigation.

We cannot use any evidence found from the autopsy in a court of law.

I tell people all the time, I almost became a neurosurgeon.

That doesn't mean that I was in medical school.

You almost became a neurosurgeon but didn't, which puts you in a special category of literally everyone on Earth except fucking neurosurgeons.

I can also claim I almost became a neurosurgeon, which is why my parents, and this is true, are almost proud of me.

And if you are wondering why a county coroner office would hire Sean's company, remember, many of them are seriously strapped for cash.

And 1 of them explains simply, it was the most affordable.

And Sean's low rates become understandable when you see 1 of his autopsy facilities, which for some reason, he was completely comfortable letting cameras in.

He's proud of this back alley autopsy lab.

There's carpet on the floor, what appears to be a lack of organization.

And this is how containers are labeled and stored.

I don't know where, okay, she's over there.

We agreed to not record a woman's body that was unwrapped and unrefrigerated in the back corner.

And it couldn't be, because there's no walk-in refrigerator inside this makeshift morgue.

Only 2 small freezers that could be purchased at any big box store.

What jumps out at me the most about Sean's tricked-out death hutch isn't the single-glade plug-in, or the name Sean surrounded by green hearts on the whiteboard, or the Tupperware containers of baked ziti and or human remains, Or the ominous presence of what appears to be a spray bottle of scrubbing bubbles, multi-surface bathroom cleaner.

Or the absolutely sick lab of nerds poster.

Or the even sicker Albert Einstein poster opposite the room temperature cadaver.

No, what gets me is that even within a grifter's back alley autopsy shanty, the most objectionable item on display there is somehow that absolutely enormous soda.

What are you doing with that thing, you fucking monster?

This repurposed ramen container could, and I have to assume does, contain blood, phlegm, and embalming fluid, and yet, it still would be significantly less nauseating than the possibility that he's drinking a 40 of squirt.

That's just me speaking personally, as well as correctly and objectively.

But wait, because there is even more here.

Because Parcells has also gotten in trouble for autopsies he's performed...

Performed through his private autopsy businesses, for which he often failed to produce any sort of report.

All of which has led to him facing pending criminal charges in Kansas of theft and desecration of bodies.

And all of this has clearly given him a bad name in the business.

But, rather than stopping what he was doing, Sean Parcells simply stopped being Sean Parcells, and instead started working under the name Professor Lynn.

And when that reporter asked him why, his answer wasn't great.

Lynn was used as a nickname, honestly, I'm being honest here, because people would butcher my last name.

I don't think Parcells is that difficult.

But I've had people say Purcellies, Parcellies.

But when you're emailing, you don't have to pronounce it out loud.

Okay, so then why are you signing things Professor Lin?

Okay, so first, That's clearly horse shit.

And second, the only person who should be going by his middle name is Hugh Grant, whose middle name, and this is true, is Mungo.

And for some reason, he chooses not to publicize that, like an idiot.

You're looking a gift horse in the mouth, mongo!

And look, as funny as Parcells is, and he is distractingly, inconveniently funny, the reality is that he's botched multiple death investigations.

And the only reason they had the opportunity to do so was because of the big gulp-sized holes in our fucked up death investigation system.

And the thing is, it is not just dramatic consequences of murder investigations being compromised or epidemics potentially being missed.

Even just ordinary delays in processing death certificates can have serious practical consequences for families.

Because ideally, you'd want a death certificate within days or weeks, but it can take much, much longer than that.

Just listen to 1 woman whose husband had passed away suddenly and who had to wait 6 months for a cause of death.

They're not thinking of these families that are waiting in agony, waiting to know what happened to their loved ones.

The holdup also left Sarah struggling financially because without the death certificate, she couldn't collect life insurance to take care of her family.

I had to rely on donations from friends and family.

To you, it's much more than just a piece of paper.

You shouldn't have to wait that long for something that important.

It's not like making someone wait 8 years to find out who wins the Game of Thrones.

And don't tell me who it is yet, I haven't seen it, but based on the season so far, I'm guessing it was Ed Sheeran.

They really know how to deliver for the fans, don't they?

I'm certainly never going to, and at the risk of sounding too prescriptive, I don't think you should either.

But in a slightly less ideal world, we would phase out coroner's offices and replace them with medical examiners.

You know, the thing that experts have been arguing for since the 1800s.

And we'd have autopsies performed or supervised by bored, certified forensic pathologists.

But that is not going to happen until we address the huge personnel shortage.

You can't hire forensic pathologists who don't exist.

So, we need to find ways to incentivize med school students to become forensic pathologists by paying them more and by properly funding the offices that they're going to be working in.

And the crazy thing is, it wouldn't even cost that much.

1 study recommended bringing public spending on these offices up to a minimum of just $3.75 per person, per year.

That is less than the amount of money that we inadvertently annually donate to our fucking couch cushions.

And look, I know this issue is tempting to ignore.

It combines 2 things that people hate thinking about the most, death and municipal funding.

And nobody wants to contemplate their own death or the death of their loved ones.

So try and think about this in a more abstract way.

Think about what you would want for a beloved entertainer.

Not me, obviously, that's the worst possible example.

Think of Beyoncé, or Ted Danson, or Glenn Close.

Do you want Glenn Close to wind up in Sean Parcell's autopsy dungeon?

Or having her spleen being eaten by a dog?

She's a seven-time Oscar nominee, and she doesn't want that to happen either, do you, Glenn?

I would argue that Glenn Close deserves 3 things.

2 Oscars, and not to have her spleen eaten by a dog.

That's the very least America can do for her.

And look, we can and we should improve our death investigation system for Glenn Close and for every other person in the country.

Not just because it's important, which it is.

Not just because it could save lives, which it could.

But because all it will cost us is roughly the same price as an extra large big gold.

And now, a message about the importance of death investigations from Tracy Morgan.

And can I talk about something for a minute?

We all know that 1 day, we all won't be on this planet.

I don't know how I'm gonna die, but I know it's not gonna be by Walmart.

When my time does come, I don't want to end up in a basement dungeon on some dude's autopsy table, standing over me with a butter knife and a dull spoon and an ice cream scooper.

See all LastWeekTonight transcripts on Youtube

Death Investigations: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)