Is the Laboratory Prepared to Handle a Mass Fatality?

Number of victims _________
Number of victim samples _________
Number of personal items _________
Number of kin _________

Whom will the laboratory be reporting to?

Who is responsible for funding the DNA identification effort?

How will the victim samples be collected and tracked?

How will the samples get to the laboratory?

How many family reference collection kits are immediately available? What modifications to the kits may need to be made?

Are there written instructions for kin reference sample collection?

How will the collection of reference samples be coordinated locally, nationally, and internationally?

How will the personal reference samples and elimination samples be scheduled and collected?

Is there an adequate accessioning area to receive all samples?

Are there procedures to handle incomplete or missing data?

Is there a laboratory information management system (LIMS) in place to track cases, including victim and reference samples?

Can cases be combined or separated in the LIMS?

How will a victim be defined (as a case)?

Is there adequate staffing for each of the following?

  • Collection
  • Accessioning
  • Extraction
  • Amplification
  • Analysis
  • Interpretation
  • Reporting
  • Quality control
  • Family relations
  • Media relations
  • New personnel

Is there sufficient space for the victim and reference samples? Are the areas separate?

Will the testing be done in-house or will some of the samples be outsourced?

If samples will be outsourced, are contracts in place that can be modified?

What modifications need to be made specific to the mass fatality? For example, how will the data be reported?

Will an advisory group be needed to provide technical support and to assist the laboratory in making major decisions?

Are there adequate extraction procedures and robotics to handle the volume? Do the parameters need to be changed for victim samples?

Can additional reagents be purchased from the same lot number already used by the laboratory?

Can the mass fatality identification effort be handled without purchasing additional equipment? Does the laboratory have the capacity?

If the lab does not have the capacity, are there procedures and policies in place to acquire equipment and consumables rapidly?

How will the generated profiles be stored?

How will the matching take place?

Is there a mechanism to review the supporting metadata for accuracy?

Is there a checklist in place?

How will reports be generated?

How will reports be issued?

How will remains and personal items be returned to the families? How will this be documented?

Does the laboratory have the financial resources to handle the identification effort?

Can the laboratory handle a backlog of its normal casework while it works on the identification effort? If so, how big can the backlog get?

Does the laboratory have kinship analysis software?

Is there a policy to handle the situation in which the genetic relationship is not consistent with the biological relationship reported by the family?

Does the laboratory have a relationship with a bioethicist?

Other____________________________________

Go to Next Section: Chapter 2: How DNA Is Used to Make Identifications

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