Dr. John C. Butt

Dr. John C. Butt is a highly-qualified specialist in forensic medicine and pathology, having served as Chief Medical Examiner for the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Nova Scotia, and also as president of the National Association of Medical Examiners in the United States. He continues to teach.

Dr. Butt has wide experience in the application of his medical expertise to legal problems, and has given expert testimony in courts in Canada, the United States, and England. In addition to the investigation of sudden death and serious injury, some representative areas of consultation include causation, medical malpractice, negligence and product liability.

The basis of the work of Pathfinder Forum is to carefully review information about the case or problem and to follow this with sound research based upon current medical literature.

In Alberta, Dr. Butt developed the most modern and comprehensive death investigation system in Canada. As the first appointee to the Medical Examiner System in that province, he initiated extensive changes in the reporting, investigative, and recording systems on certification of sudden death, and developed training programs for medical examiners. He also developed the Alberta Medical Examiners Tissue Program (1984), which served as a landmark policy in Canada for co-operation between a medicolegal authority and the transplant community.

In Nova Scotia, Dr. Butt became closely associated with the relief efforts and investigation following the crash of Swissair flight 111 on September 2, 1998, 13 kilometres off the south coast of Nova Scotia near the popular tourist village of Peggy's Cove. Butt's job -- identifying the fragments of human remains that scattered across a large area of open water -- was a complicated task, and required the most advanced techniques of matching DNA to come up with positive identifications. His team and the RCMP eventually identified remains for all 229 people who died in the crash. The magnitude of this disaster forged relationships between the doctor and the grieving families. Butt has since been asked to speak with pathologists and other health care professionals in Canada and the United States about why it is important to build relationships with families, who desperately want information about the people they have lost.

Dr. Butt has been a Professor of Pathology for more than 20 years, most recently at Dalhousie University in Halifax, and has lectured at universities across Canada. He organized the Canadian Police College section on Forensic Pathology (part of a major crime investigative techniques course) which is presented four to five times each year in Ottawa. In addition, he has given numerous lectures and seminars in Canada, USA and abroad to provincial, state, national and international associations, learned societies, governments, police colleges and others on various subjects, usually based upon a medicolegal/sudden death theme.

PATHFINDER
FORUM

Dr. John C. Butt

Suite 400
1681 Chestnut Street
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada V6J 4M6