Identifying the recovered - remains of American service members

WHILE their workplace is now officially known an the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command's Central Identification Laboratory, the mission of the anthropologists and forensic odontologists of the former CILHI hasn't changed. Simply put, it's their job to identify the recovered remains of American service members.

The first step in that process is the analysis of the skeletal remains, which is always undertaken by an anthropologist who did not take part in the actual recovery of the remains.

"That's done so that when the anthropologists begin their analyses they don't have any preconceived notions of what they're going to find," said Dr. Helen M. Wols, a CIL forensic anthropologist and lab manager.

The nature and location of the service member's death can greatly influence how much materiel the anthropologists have to work with, Wols said. For example, the skeletal remains of soldiers killed in ground combat tend to be more complete and better preserved than those of pilots whose aircraft crashed into the ground at high speeds.

The anthropologist first lays out the remains in anatomical order and removes any debris or commingled remains. By examining the size, density and other characteristics of the remains, the anthropologist can often glean such information as the age, sex, race and stature of the deceased, and can often detect the signs of medical disorders from which the person might have suffered, Wols said.

Because teeth are very durable and the dental work a person undergoes can be very individualistic, odonotology can also provide key information. The lab's odontologists work independently, and can refer to a computer database that includes most of the dental information for personnel missing from the Vietnam and Korean wars. The computer will generate a list of possible matches for the teeth.

"The forensic odontologists compare the dental remains that we recover with the ante-mortem dental records in order to make a positive dental

identification." Wols said. "And that's the type of identification we really want, that's the standard."

If a dental ID is not possible, the lab can turn to mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, analysis, Wols said.

"Mitochondrial DNA is very hardy, and there are thousands of copies of it per cell, so it's easier to get from a bone or a tooth than nuclear DNA," she said. "But if the bone has been burned or the fragment is very small, we can't get it. Currently, about 50 percent of our cases go to mtDNA."

The mtDNA can be drawn from teeth or bones, but if drawn from the latter the process is destructive because the sample must be cut from the bone, Wols said. Once obtained, samples are sent to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Md. If AFDIL is able to "sequence" the mtDNA in the sample, the CIL staff asks the branch to which the service member belonged to contact the person's family to ask for a family reference sample.

While an mtDNA match between a family member and the deceased service member is strong evidence for a positive identification, Wols said, it is not conclusive because people who are only distantly related may share similar sequences. Instead, the mtDNA match is considered one more piece in the identification "puzzle"--the goal is to make the identification by combining the mtDNA results with the other analyses.

Once the anthropologists and odontologists complete their analyses other members of the lab's scientific staff review each case. The case is then forwarded to the agency's scientific director, who acts as a medical examiner to establish the identification. Once that identification is made, the case is forwarded to the appropriate service casualty office, which contacts the family.

By the time of its consolidation with JTF-FA, CILHI had been able to identify more than 1,100 sets of remains. And each identification has been important to the lab staffers, Wols said.

"The families of unaccounted-for service members have waited years for answers, and to be able to play some role, even if it's small, in them getting those answers is just so incredibly rewarding," she said.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Soldiers Magazine
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group