Victims' remains to be stored in World Trade Centre memorial

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1029541,00.html

Victims' remains to be stored in World Trade Centre memorial

Associated Press
Tuesday August 26, 2003

The unidentified remains of more than a thousand people who died in the World Trade Centre attacks will be interred at a memorial at the site until advances in DNA technology can identify them. More than 12,000 body parts have yet to be identified, and they will be stored at the rebuilt site at the requests of many of the victims' relatives, the New York Times reported in Monday editions. The remains are to be dried, then individually vacuum-sealed in opaque white pouches. The procedure means memorial designers will not be faced with needing to include a refrigeration or freezer system.
<snip>

Since the September 11, 2001, attacks, the medical examiner's office has recovered 19,936 remains and has tried to match them with the 2,792 missing people. As of last week, 1,271 victims and 12,471 remains had not been identified, the New York Times said.
The memorial will also house remains that have not been collected by victims' families. <snip>

I always thought that you could determine an identity from the tiniest sample. I'd think that a body PART would have enough DNA for identification. What's the story on these parts? Are they contaminated, or...?

Unless your DNA has been banked somewhere for ID purposes, there wouldn't be anything to compare the DNA they can extract from the remains against.

that they had been working on a database of victims' DNA, but maybe there were just too many thousands of people/samples to get it done. It's sad, I can't imagine losing a loved one that way.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

This would be another way to add to the 9/11 incident.

Why not just cremate the remains?

I guess it is a closure issue for some of the families. I personally could move on with the simple understanding that my loved one has died. Some people will harbor a nagging doubt. If it helps them...so be it.

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By all means, memorialize, but drying and vacuum-sealing parts? The Ancient Egyptians might understand this, but I don't.