The Dead Do Talk is an autobiography (ISBN 978-981-4302-73-9,
Marshall Cavendish Editions, Singapore, 2011) written by the highly regarded
Thai forensic pathologist, Dr. Porntip Rojanasunan. Dr Porntip is the lady
by whose spiky colored hair she is recognized everywhere. However, after
reading this book you will find there is much more to this enterprising
woman than her coiffeur.
She begins by saying, “I have never thought I am
particularly smart. But I was always taught to be conscious of Buddhist
doctrine, to follow Dharma and observe religious precepts.” Even more
pointedly she writes in the preface, “I strive to be true to myself, to be
who I am and not let society or other pressures change me or divert me from
my course.”
Her upbringing was strict and she was not born with a
silver spoon in her mouth, but earned money selling textbooks and hand-made
handbags to get her through her medical undergraduate years.
The autobiography is very frank and personal and she
details immature ‘love’ attachments and how she eventually learned to deal
with these, and subsequent rejections. And more importantly, how she managed
to get her head straight at the same time. Her frank expose of herself
continues in the chapter where she looks at what branches of medicine she
would head towards. Anesthesiology was rejected because, “… you always had
to wear hair protectors and you couldn’t wear make-up - all that would
impinge on the way I dressed.”
She discusses, in one chapter, her fight against cancer -
not one but two and how this affected her emotionally, and again how she
drew upon her Buddhist faith to come out on top.
A great believer in the Zodiac, she even applied the
signs of the Zodiac to her future husband to ensure compatibility. This I
personally found rather odd for such a highly qualified woman, but beliefs
can co-exist with science, or can do in Dr. Porntip’s case.
She writes of the problems experienced in setting up the
Forensics Institute and the lack of cooperation experienced at times from
the police, and details instances where it is quite obvious that the police
had overstepped their brief.
Problems abound in the way investigations are carried
out, and Dr. Porntip is convinced that abuse of powers by police is one of
the reasons there are more than 10,000 unidentified corpses each year in
Thailand. A monstrous figure. DNA testing which is used overseas has been
studied, but yet she is having problems with its acceptance and has had
further problems where testing results can be “changed’ with money changing
hands. Corruption appears to be endemic at all levels of government and
public service.
Specific cases are mentioned, such as the Hangthong
‘suicide’, which according to forensic evidence was much more likely to be
murder. However, this was denied by the police. She also mentions the
disturbing Tak Bai incident in the south of Thailand and the official
cover-ups and the problems she encountered with identifying victims of the
tsunami. In many ways this is a very disturbing book.
The RRP in Bookazine was B. 530.
