DOD lab using DNA samples
to identify Pentagon victims
By Mark Oliva, Okinawa
bureau
Quietly and tediously, nearly 40 Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory scientists
work to identify the remains of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The painstaking identification process of collecting bone, dental and tissue samples is
conducted at Dover Air Force Base, Del., and at the lab’s annex in nearby Rockville,
Md. The remains are coming from the Pentagon and from Somerset County, Pa., the United
Airlines Flight 93 crash site.
"Over the course of this first month, we’ll have close to 40 scientists
taking turns at conducting the scientific work," said Christopher Kelly, spokesman
for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. "As time progresses we will be able to
reduce the size to under 10 staff members to continue this work. We have teams of
one-to-three scientists at each site to assist the examining forensic pathologist or
anthropologist in obtaining tissue, bone or teeth."
It’s the second largest effort by the institute to identify victims of a
mass-casualty disaster, Kelly said. The largest was the identification of the 217 victims
of the Egypt Air 990 incident in 1999.
Military personnel are working with families to obtain DNA samples for identification
matches and reference comparisons. Identification of military members may be easier
because of the Department of Defense’s effort to file DNA samples on every uniformed
servicemember, Kelly said.
"We maintain the Armed Forces Repository of Specimen Samples for Identification of
Remains at a secure facility in suburban Maryland," he said. "The repository
contains over 3.5 million blood stain cards for all active duty and reserve
servicemembers. It is completely up to date."
Identifying civilian victims is a more exhaustive procedure, Kelly said. They must
collect samples from the family that may contain trace amounts of DNA.
"Casualty assistance officers … are working with the families of the victims
of both crashes to collect DNA reference specimens," Kelly explained. "We want
first items that can be validated as coming directly from the victim. Glass slides,
paraffin blocks, Pap smears and PKU cards on file at a hospital are the single best
samples we can get.
"Other items include hair, toothbrushes (saliva), hair brushes, curling irons,
clothing with DNA on it, etc., which are more complicated to work with," he added.
They are more complicated because there is a higher risk of contamination or something
that shows combination of more than one person.
"Immediate family members who came to the family assistance center, virtually all
were military or DOD civilians and contractors — wife, parents, children — will
also provide blood samples for DNA analysis," Kelly said. "Our deputy DNA
program manager established a blood sample collection and staffed it for two weeks …
"
Making DNA matches normally is relatively quick. It’s a biochemical process where
DNA molecules are separated from proteins and fats and purified through microfilters. The
DNA then is copied to make an original template and analyzed in a special gel solution.
Computers sort the fragments and comparisons are drawn from the sample against reference
specimens.
"A single unknown sample with an unknown reference can be done in about four
days," Kelly said. "That’s the ideal condition. With more victims,
we’ll have hundreds of samples to process. We’ll need tissue specimens and
references for all these individuals, and the process can take many weeks depending on our
ability to recover the remains and obtain usable reference specimens. It also requires us
to ‘back into’ an identification, especially if we have to obtain reference
specimens from a spouse and child, which means we have to continually exclude individuals
until we determine who the father or mother is."
Still, Kelly said there is the possibility that not every DNA sample is useable, given
the factors of the fires that ripped through the Pentagon and erupted when Flight 93
crashed.
"The possibility certainly exists — based on our past experience with
severely burned remains — that samples may not yield DNA," he said. "If
there’s some degradation, we can still get a DNA identification. So samples will be
both valid and useable in those cases. Any sample that is completely degraded will be
unusable for obtaining DNA."
Officials at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology are well versed in identification
of human remains by DNA analysis, going back to the 1978 Jonestown mass suicide in Guyana,
South America. They also assisted in the identification of 248 soldiers from the 101st
Airborne Division killed in a plane crash in 1985.
More recently they were responsible for the identification of the 17 sailors killed in
the USS Cole bombing, the V-22 Osprey crashes and C-23 Sherpa crash that killed 50
servicemembers.
They also have conducted high-profile identification matches on U.S. personnel
recovered from the wars in Vietnam, Korea and World War II, as well as the identification
of Air Force Lt. Michael Blassie from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in 1998 and
confirmation of the remains of Czar Nicholas II in 1995.
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