About 6 weeks after Joan Rivers' death we are now hearing that the true cause of the comedienne's passing may never be known. At the time of Rivers' unexpected medical crisis, her daughter Melissa Rivers was reportedly extremely upset and ultimately decided against having an autopsy done on her mother. In the state of New York if foul play is not suspected then the family's wish of no autopsy is honored. In this instance there was no autopsy performed and so pin-pointing the exact cause of death may never be possible.
While it was announced last week that Rivers was brain dead after the oxygen supply was cut to her brain for an extended period of time, that doesn't explain the circumstances under which it happened. Insiders have stated that while Propofol was used to sedate Rivers it isn't believed to have directly contributed to her death. Supposedly her EMT decided to perform a biopsy on her vocal cords, a procedure that Rivers did not give permission for and in doing so may have punctured her throat or caused some other type of trauma.
Unfortunately, determining something like that would require that an autopsy be completed so it will never be definitively known. There has been a lot of speculation about Melissa potentially filing a malpractice suit but without autopsy results to solidly back up any allegations she might have an uphill battle in court. Do you think that she is regretting blocking the autopsy on her mother now that some time has passed? It seems like after the initial shock has settled in Rivers' family would likely want to know exactly what went wrong, don't you think?
