New DNA trick aids 9/11 victims

PULVERISED: BONES GROUND UP AND RETESTED

Argentina, Canada and South Africa have been beneficiaries of this protocol.

New DNA analysis techniques are helping identify more victims of the attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, scientists in the office of New York City’s chief medical examiner said on Thursday.

Although the death toll after two hijacked airliners crashed into the Twin Towers was 2 753, the remains of more than 1 000 are still unidentified, to the dismay of their grieving families.

Using technology it pioneered, the medical examiner’s office said it was able to recently identify financial worker Scott Michael Johnson, 26, who worked on the 89th floor of the South Tower.

One new victim has been identified in each of the last five years due to advancements.

Investigators in the world’s largest crime lab made the breakthrough by retesting bone fragments they had examined before.

“These are all samples that we’ve tried in the past,” said Mark Desire, who leads the medical examiner’s crime lab.

Desire and his team demonstrated the steps of the latest DNA analysis technique.

Known as the World Trade Centre Protocol, the method has been used to help identify victims of train and plane crashes and terrorist attacks in Argentina, Canada, South Africa and elsewhere, Desire said.

Moving from table to table, the scientists showed how they clean the bone, pulverize it into a powder, add chemicals, incubate it, and place it in a large white auto-extraction machine that pulls out any recoverable DNA.

The more a bone is pulverised, the more likely it is to extract DNA. The newest step is placing the bone in a chamber containing liquid nitrogen, which makes the bone more fragile, and shaking it until it is ground to a powder. – Reuters