Bones of contention key to John Wilkes Booth mystery

The National Museum of Health and Medicine could hold the key to answering a controversy that’s nearly 150 years old: Is President Lincoln’s assassin actually buried in the historic Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore?

According to the official government report, John Wilkes Booth was killed on April 26, 1865, after being surrounded in a barn in Port Royal, Va., 12 days after he shot and killed Lincoln. His body was eventually returned to the Booth family, who buried him in an unmarked grave in the family plot at Green Mount in 1869. But since then, theories have circulated that the man shot in that barn was not Booth and that he had escaped justice. One theory suggests he lived until 1903, when he supposedly committed suicide in Oklahoma.

One way to answer the question would require exhuming the body in Baltimore. Booth’s descendants—supported by the Smithsonian Institution, which said it thinks the Booth escape theory is worth a closer look—filed a court case to exhume the body, but that request was denied in 1995. The judge’s decision cited possibly severe water damage to the plot, evidence that siblings were buried on top of Booth, and the “less than convincing escape/coverup theory.”

So, how does the National Museum of Health and Medicine fit in? The Silver Spring, Md., museum holds three of Booth’s cervical vertebrae, which were kept by the U.S. Army after an autopsy. Given advancements in technology, DNA from the bones of Booth’s thespian brother, Edwin, could be compared with DNA from the museum’s bones to end the controversy. And a direct descendent has agreed to the exhumation of Edwin Booth, who was buried in Boston.

However, earlier this year, the U.S. Army Medical Command, which is in charge of the museum, denied the request, since a proposed DNA test would require using less than 0.4 grams of the bones. In a letter to Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who helped submit the request, the museum said “the need to preserve these bones for future generations compels us to decline the destructive test.”

Lights, camera, blood test?

Walk onto any Hollywood studio lot, and you’re likely to see a bevy of trailers serving as dressing rooms, mobile offices or even a cafeteria. But lately, there has been another kind of trailer seen outside soundstages, and at this one, a doctor will see you. Not Doogie Howser, mind you, but a real one.

It’s sponsored by the Motion Picture and Television Fund, a charitable organization started in 1921 by some of Hollywood’s legendary early stars, including Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Health Wheels makes the rounds on Hollywood backlots four times a week, according to the L.A. Daily News, serving employees who work behind the scenes on TV shows and movies. They routinely work 14hour days, making it hard to leave the lot to see a physician.

The 30-foot-long mobile clinic includes an exam room and nurse’s station and can handle everything from skin biopsies to blood work to ear wax buildup. (Using ear plugs on set is common in the studios.) But getting an exam in the clinic isn’t free, as the costs are billed to insurance. Still, the clinic is just about the closest you can get to a doctor making a house call.

The reluctant centenarians

Medical advances have made it possible for many of us to live to see our 100th birthdays, but more than half of adults don’t think they want to blow out that many candles.

A study from the Pew Research Center conducted this year found that 56% of respondents said they believed they would not want to take advantage of medical technology that would allow them to slow the aging process and live till at least 120 years old.

Moreover, 69% of respondents said their ideal life span would be between 79 and 100 years old.

The study, part of the Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Project, comes as extreme old age may soon be not-so-extreme thanks to medical advances. But the findings suggest that it’s not old age that gives most people pause, but the drug industry.

There’s certainly optimism for the future: Only 10% of respondents said they thought our graying population is bad for society, and 56% believe their own lives will get even better over the next 10 years. Even when it comes to extreme life extension, just more than half of respondents (51%) said they worried it would strain natural and social resources and be limited to the very wealthy.

But respondents were more skeptical about the medical advances they’d need to make that happen. Only 24% of respondents said they were confident that new therapies are thoroughly tested before being marketed, and 41% believe medical treatments “often create as many problems as they solve.”

Quotable

“There are hospitals out there that have been independent for 80 years and they’re saying, ‘We’re going to be independent for the next 100 years.’ That’s going to be a tall order. As other hospitals consolidate and grow around you, whatever niche you had will vaporize.”

—Lisa Goldstein, an analyst of not-for-profit hospitals at Moody’s Investors Service