Autopsies

As KCET officially becomes an independent public television station Saturday, no longer affiliated with the Public Broadcasting Service, a few more of its former programs have found homes. "Tavis Smiley," formerly seen on KCET weeknights at 7 and 11 p.m., will now be seen weeknights at 11 on KOCE, beginning Monday. "The Charlie Rose Show," which used to follow "Tavis Smiley" on KCET at 11:30 p.m., will now be airing opposite it at 11 p.m. on KVCR, also beginning Monday. With KCET dropping out of PBS in a dispute over dues, KOCE is now the noncommercial network's primary affiliate in the L.A.-Orange County area, offering such staples as "PBS NewsHour," "Nova," "Masterpiece," "Sesame Street," "Frontline" and "Great Performances.

If Elizabeth Uyehara were alive, she would be pleased. Everything was working out as she had hoped. The terrible banality of her illness had ended, and she was about to make her final journey. Two hours before she died, David Jones' pager went off. He canceled his lunch and made a few phone calls to sort out the details with the hospital and the family. He went to his lab and picked up the paperwork and, before heading over the Sepulveda Pass, stopped at a 7-Eleven for some ice that he tossed into a cooler.

A preliminary autopsy on the remains of two babies discovered wrapped in newspapers from the 1930s and stuffed into a steamer trunk in the basement of a Los Angeles apartment building found no apparent signs of trauma, authorities said Monday, and the preliminary cause of death has been classified as "undetermined. " Officials with the Los Angeles County coroner's office and the Los Angeles Police Department said the next step in their investigation would be to use toxicology and DNA tests to determine a final cause of death, whether the babies were related and to whom they belonged.

California lawmakers should reject a bill that would give families of murdered children the power to keep autopsy reports sealed from public view. Although the desire to shield traumatized parents from further pain is understandable, SB 982 would undermine public oversight of the criminal justice system and in the end would do little to protect families. The bill, by Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth (R-Murrieta), is one of several legislative responses to the recent high-profile killings of teenagers Chelsea King and Amber Dubois.

They sent army doctors, police and hand-selected veterinarians to rescue her, but after three hours at a hospital, nothing could save Quan Quan, the beloved giant panda at the Jinan Zoo in Shandong province. On Tuesday, six days after Quan Quan's death, officials said that poisonous gas had killed the 21-year-old panda, dubbed a "heroic mother" by state media for giving birth to seven cubs over the years. An autopsy revealed that Quan Quan, who was about 70 in panda years, died after inhaling carbon monoxide and chlorine from a former air raid shelter that was being disinfected.

NEW YORK - Autopsy tools used to embalm and prepare Elvis Presley's body for his funeral in 1977 and a toe tag used on the singer for identification purposes are set to go under the hammer at a Chicago auction house. The instruments up for sale at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers on Aug. 12 include rubber gloves, forceps, lip brushes, a comb and eye liner, needle injectors, an arterial tube and aneurysm hooks, all of which the auction house say were used only once. The collection, saved for years by a senior embalmer at the Memphis Funeral Home who wishes to stay anonymous, also includes a toe tag marked "John Doe" which was used as a replacement after the original was stolen by a fan during chaos at the hospital.

Contrary to speculation that actor Corey Haim died of a drug overdose, the Los Angeles County coroner's office announced Tuesday that the former child actor died of pneumonia . Neither illegal nor prescription drugs were a factor in the actor's death, the coroner's office found — a marked contrast to early reports from authorities. The autopsy found that Haim, 38, died of respiratory distress related to pneumonia with the presence of an enlarged heart and narrowing blood vessels.

The Los Angeles County coroner's department risks a shortage of doctors by 2014, according to an audit released this week. The anticipated shortage as doctors retire and fewer trainees are recruited could cause long waits for autopsies and threaten the coroner's department's national accreditation, according to the 104-page audit completed by Strategica, a firm based near Seattle. Auditors blamed some of the recruiting problems on "ineffective mentoring and discouraging remarks from senior physicians."

Actress Brittany Murphy's sudden death at 32 was due to pneumonia exacerbated by anemia and a harmful combination of medications. Ending weeks of speculation in the entertainment media over the Dec. 20 death of the "Clueless" and "8 Mile" star, the Los Angeles County coroner announced Thursday that the primary cause was "community-acquired pneumonia," with contributing factors of "iron deficiency anemia" and "multiple drug intoxication." The drugs involved were prescription and over-the-counter medications she took orally, said Ed Winter, assistant chief at the L.A. County coroner's office.

Gaines Adams, a defensive lineman for the Chicago Bears who was an All-American at Clemson, died Sunday at a hospital in Greenwood, S.C., the team announced. He was 26. Adams had gone into cardiac arrest about an hour earlier at his family's home, said Marcia Kelley-Clark, chief deputy coroner for Greenwood County. An autopsy showed an enlarged heart, a condition that can often lead to a heart attack, Kelley-Clark said. She said relatives were unaware of any medical condition.