Will every person or every fragment be identified?

Robert Shaler

DNA analysis can be the most reliable and robust of the identification modalities. Although it may be a second choice to dental and fingerprint analysis when such evidence exists, DNA evidence still should be collected in case dental and fingerprint records are not available.

The answer to the question of whether every victim or every fragment of remains will be identified frames the scope of the DNA identification effort. Obviously, intact bodies will require fewer DNA tests than fragmented remains, although decomposing bodies may not easily yield full profiles.

For example, in an airplane crash with 50 victims, in which each victim’s remains are fragmented into 100 pieces, the identification effort undoubtedly would end sooner if the goal is to identify each victim, rather than each fragment of human remains. Everyone—the public, the policymakers, and the laboratory personnel—needs to understand the answer to the important question: “When are we finished?”

If the policy is to identify all of the victims, DNA analysis would stop as soon as the last victim is identified—which means that some human remains may never be analyzed or returned to the families. However, when the goal of the effort is the attempted identification of all fragments, the work of the laboratory likely will be greater.

It is important to consider that, if a mass fatality incident is so large and devastating that it affects the psyche of a community, a country, or the world, the scope of the identification effort may be broadened to help acknowledge the breadth of the emotional ramifications. After the 9/11 attacks, for example, the Mayor of New York City directed the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to do everything humanly possible to identify every fragment of human remains. This policy resulted in new DNA analysis techniques and approaches; any biological fragments that could not be identified were preserved for potential analysis with future technologies.

The absence of policies guiding the number of DNA tests that will be attempted on severely compromised samples can have enormous consequences. In planning for a future mass fatality, policymakers should consider the impact on the public if technologies at the time are insufficient to obtain DNA profiles on all remains. Lessons learned from the World Trade Center (WTC) identification effort suggest that policymakers need to understand that the broadest testing scale can add years to a DNA identification effort.

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