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Study: Disasters Hinder DNA Science

Posted on: Tuesday, 22 November 2005, 18:00 CST

By Lee Bowman SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE

While DNA science has proved remarkably adept at identifying human remains, a report by a special advisory committee set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks says more work is needed to ensure that families are reunited with loved ones lost in future catastrophes.

The scientists noted that at the time of the terrorist attacks, no infrastructure existed for the rapid identification of a disaster that claimed thousands of victims. The only model was from airliner crashes, where investigators generally know who was on board and where they were sitting.

"We need to establish routines and systems that will lead to more rapid and efficient identifications," said Leslie Biesecker, a senior investigator at the National Institute of Human Genome Research and lead author of the report published Friday in the journal Science.

Even now, Louisiana health officials report there are 321 unidentified victims of Hurricane Katrina being held in a temporary morgue in St. Gabriel, La. Officials say they expect that DNA matches with relatives will be required for at least half of the victims to be identified.

After 9/11, much of what the New York City Medical Examiner's Office did had to be made up or modified as recovery and identification efforts went along. A list of missing that once was feared to exceed 5,000 eventually reached 2,749 lives presumed lost.

Of that number, through Sept. 11 of this year, 1,594 victims had been identified, including 850 confirmed only through DNA comparisons. Along with the medical examiner, the advisory committee, known as the Kinship and Data Analysis Panel, has concluded that no further identifications can be made at this point using the samples that were collected.

The condition of the remains ranged from a few nearly intact bodies to tiny fragments of charred bone, often intermingled and hard to distinguish from building materials. Fires in the ruins of the World Trade Center burned for more than three months after the attacks and had reached temperatures of more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, and many samples had deteriorated to a point that standard analytical techniques wouldn't work.

Ultimately, more than 20,000 tissue fragments were collected from the site and had to be catalogued and analyzed.

"It was a significant challenge, but the group was dedicated to the difficult task at hand. Our motivation was to help the medical examiner return to the families physical remains of their family members," Biesecker said.

Many survivors misunderstood or had unrealistic expectations about what DNA analysis could accomplish. Based on the advisory committee's recommendations, new brochures have been produced by medical examiners around the country.

Although most identifications were made using standard testing methods, the New York State Police lab and several private DNA testing labs hired to aid the effort had to add new methods that work better with fragmented DNA. The committee said more work needs to be done to improve methods for extracting DNA from human remains.

In some cases, the "reference" DNA samples came from the victims themselves, retrieved from hairbrushes and toothbrushes, or from stored medical specimens. In many other instances, next of kin provided DNA via blood or cheek swabs.

Along with brochures for the relatives, the investigators also had to develop collection kits that allowed them to store and process all the material.

Biesecker said having the kits and other things "ready to go right out of the gate" could save time and money for other mass- casualty incidents.

Source: Albuquerque Journal

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