I see dead people,” Haley Joel Osment said memorably in the thriller The Sixth Sense. While that line spooked millions of viewers across the world, it captures the essence of Doctor Ayman Fouda’s profession as Egypt’s Chief Forensic Medical Examiner.

“Upon joining the Forensics Institute, I discovered that I had a talent for dealing with dead people — I treat them as a physician would, not a coroner,” he says.

Appointed an assistant state medical investigator in 1980, he recalls how at that time forensic analysis in Egypt was based almost exclusively on visual examination — there was no real scientific analysis of a corpse or the evidence as we understand it today.

That discovery prompted the young doctor to enroll at the Faculty of Forensic Sciences, a decision that went sharply against the grain of the time. “People then thought that forensic practitioners [had] much more knowledge and experience — better knowledge and experience — than forensic academia,” he explains. Eventually graduating in 1990 with a degree in Forensic Medicine, Fouda went back to the Forensics Institute and started applying what he had learned.

In 2000, he became the Institute’s chief, a position from which he has guided investigations into the bombings of Taba (2004) and Sharm El-Sheikh (2005). It was then that he added a new dimension to his investigations: profiling the culprits. The bombings were completely new to Egyptian forensic doctors, but they gave Fouda the chance to utilize the techniques he learned in university and through decades of devotion to continuing education. Foreign involvement in the bombings, and the huge media coverage they attracted, were additional challenges: Any error would be exaggerated a hundred-fold and have a direct impact on Egypt’s image.

But from a scientific standpoint, Fouda, notes, “high-profile cases are the same as normal cases; nothing is different. You have to stick to what the evidence tells you and be completely impartial. It all starts with integrity of the crime scene and four basic areas of questioning: First: Was there a death? If yes, was it an accident, a suicide or a murder? If it was murder, then what was the weapon and how was it used. Second: How long has the victim been dead? Third: Was the body moved to its present location or is this the place of death. Then, of course, there’s the meat of it all: Who and why?”

Now that he’s a senior manager and not a field investigator, Fouda is called out of bed only for the biggest of cases. Instead, Fouda’s day begins with the fajr (dawn) prayer. He has breakfast and starts to read anything he can get his hands on — news, of course, but if there is a new case, he reads it from cover to cover. By 9:30 he is in the office, where he says his day is divided almost evenly into strategic planning, discussing case findings with his physicians and designing training and continuing education plans for the 2,800 staffers he supervises.

A regular host of international symposia, Fouda says he also spends a fair bit of time working with his foreign counterparts, whether bringing them up-to-date on investigations in which they may have an interest or exchanging best practices.

He leaves the office at 5pm and, until he goes to bed at 10 o’clock, he spends time with his children and surfs the news on television. And how about crime investigation serials such as CSI? Do they make it onto his to-do list? Not often, he says, though he notes that the best of them are “very close to reality. The only major scientific problem with them is that they always depict the analysis of materials or DNA testing as being done on the spot, where in reality it could take weeks, if not months.”

By integrating academic rigor with field examination, Fouda is widely acknowledged as having helped take his profession to the next level in Egypt. Still, he says, some frustrations remain: “The most misunderstood thing about this profession is that some people see an autopsy as being disrespectful of the dead, and that it is against religion. This is not true. We fight crime, making reports that form a crucial part of the judge’s final decision in any case. What’s more, we are the ones called in to adjudicate claims of medical malpractice. And we play a vital role in fighting disease outbreaks [such as the H5N1 avian flu outbreak] and work with epidemiologists to set plans in place to limit their spread.”

So does Fouda see dead people when he finally rolls into bed? Hardly. The secret to a good night’s sleep — not to mention a social life, he says — once he unplugs from the horror he sees on a daily basis is simple: “Forget everything you have seen during the day the minute you step outside the office. If I didn’t, what I see every day could turn me into this introvert who fears everybody and everything.

“But at the end of the day, work is work and family is family. Never mix them.” 

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