Forensic Test Kits

In the late 1970s college and graduate students began to hear lectures on a technique called northern blot. Little did they know that that technique would one day contribute to the development of forensic test kits. Few clues did they have that those forensic test kits would then be used to identify the remains of people who had perished during an attack on the United States. Five years after that attack the public had become well-acquainted with the abilities of such kits. In October of 2006, one finding also underscored the noticeable failing in any such kit.Present-day forensic test kits offer the pathologist an almost guaranteed way to identify the individual whose death preceded the discovery of any group of remains. The abilities of the forensic test kits have even led the military to declare that present and future wars will not have any “unknown soldier.” The remains of all fallen soldiers will be known, because forensic analysis permits identification of the DNA in all such remains.

Following the tragedy on September 11, 2001, a number of mourning American families awaited the results of many different forensic test kits. Each of those kits allowed for the identification of remains taken from the collapsed World Trade Center. Use of those kits highlighted the advantages of molecular biology, the science that deals with the analysis of the molecular structures in a biochemical sample.

The techniques used by modern molecular biologists permit the analysis of the DNA in or on any sample. Analysis of that DNA holds the key to the identification of that sample. Forensic test kits facilitate analysis of the DNA obtained from hair, clothing and swabbed regions of the body, such as the mouth.

Yet the pathologist needs more than the DNA taken from a murdered individual. The pathologist also needs the DNA from a family member. A comparison of the DNA from both sources can either confirm or refute the suspected identity of the murdered individual. Still few pathologists have trouble obtaining the DNA of relatives.

Families that suffered a loss on September 11, 2001 were only too happy to collect samples of their own DNA. They also looked for possible samples with the DNA of the deceased. The forensic investigators in New York received many packages containing one or more toothbrush or hairbrush. During the week of October 16, 2006, it appeared that they might need to request more samples.

A find made that week underlined the one weakness in today’s forensic test kits. It is a weakness that scientists will probably not be able to correct. Even those chemists who developed the sophisticated forensic test for strychnine poison could find it impossible to repair the great weakness in the existing forensic test kits.

That major weakness concerns the recovery of the needed samples. New remains have been uncovered at the site of the old World Trade Center. This discovery was made while more than 1,000 families remained without any word that remains of deceased relatives, loved ones in the towers on that fateful day, had been recovered. 

Those families were then calling for more efforts to locate missing body parts, body parts that might be buried in under a new structure. Their demands underscored the limits of the existing forensic tests. Their demands focused-in on the one area in which those tests could be improved.

Filed under: Test Kits