I feel like this is stupid question and I just can’t brain today but here goes…
This came about while I was reading about 9/11 earlier (am not American) but I’m now questioning a lot of things. Anyway, I read there’s still something like 1,000 human remains yet to be identified from that day; so how does that work in any case? If we know who is unaccounted for and there are bodies, why can’t they be matched up?
In: Biology
Most of the remains from then are incomplete and severely damaged body parts, without DNA from the person before they died identifying remains is extremely difficult. You may have 60 right legs and know that one of them belongs to John Smith, but you can’t be sure which one.
Cop here:
I’ll try to avoid being super graphic, but sometimes people get so pulverized and mutilated, there aren’t big enough peices to figure out who or where they came from.
Many years ago there was a plane crash near my city.
Officers and firefighters were roaming a large section of fields and woods, looking for remains.
What they did was carry several dozen little orange flags, and just stick them next to whatever looked like it came from a person.
Not every body part can be traced back to an individual person. DNA can be easily ruined, and most people don’t have their DNA on file.
Sometimes human remains just aren’t intact enough to be able to identify who they belong to. I imagine during some severe accidents or something like the towers falling that things just, well, don’t always stay attached to other things.
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The collapse of the building was incredibly destructive to human beings. Some bodies were basically torn apart. They’ve used DNA analysis to identify as much as they can, even very small pieces. But sometimes the DNA was damaged and sometimes they have pieces that don’t match any of the DNA they have on file.
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