News-Info-Alerts

Re: DNA & Identification

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: September 03, 2002

"Be All That DNA Can Be

Nearly 2,500 U.S. service members were listed as MIA/POW at the end of the Vietnam War. In its commitment to bringing home and identifying all lost soldiers, the Army has pioneered the use of a DNA technology that has quietly changed the scope of forensic science.

Mitochondrial DNA testing, a little-understood and somewhat controversial technique, was instrumental in the identification of three servicemen: Lt. Col. Donald E. Parsons, Chief Warrant Officer Charles I. Stanley and Sgt. 1st Class Eugene F. Christiansen, who earlier this month were returned to their families.

The men had been missing since Feb. 6, 1969, when their UH-1H Huey helicopter went down in the Vietnam jungle (along with Robert C. O'Hara, Ronald D. Briggs and Vu Vanh Phao (ARVN) -- all still missing).

The technique has caused quite a stir in the POW/MIA community and has also wrought significant changes in America's relationship to its war dead. Some activists claim the Army uses the science too liberally, but the mtDNA test has already become de facto in more than just identifying unknown soldiers.

The most well-known case regarding mtDNA identification involved the 1998 disinterment of Air Force 1st Lt. Michael Blassie from the Vietnam Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Air Force Reserve Capt. Pat Blassie, Lt. Blassie's sister, said her family was granted immeasurable comfort by the outcome of the test.

"For 26 years my mother wondered where her son was," Blassie said. "DNA testing was very important. No one has questioned the results."

The mtDNA test, though, is the last stage in a painstaking process that combines the efforts of the Army's Central Identification Lab in Hawaii and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Maryland.

The Hawaii lab's forensic anthropologists and odontologists are responsible for collecting and identifying remains, Ginger Couden, Central Identification Lab public affairs spokeswoman, said.

Once it has been determined that mtDNA is necessary for a positive identification, a sample is cut from the remains -- "only 5 grams are necessary," Couden said -- and sent to the Maryland-based DNA lab for the actual mtDNA testing, she said.

The mitochondrial DNA is extracted from the sample by crushing a part of it into an emulsifying solution that extracts the mtDNA. Then the mixture is put into a centrifuge. The resulting DNA is passed through a filter, amplified and examined through a sequencing process.

Forensic mitochondrial DNA testing is often confused with the more common nuclear DNA test. Cell nuclei contain the full 46 chromosomes that identify unique individuals (except for identical twins), and proper testing provides irrefutable identification.

However, nuclear DNA can only be isolated in the recently deceased. In cases of long-dead unknown soldiers, where cell nuclei have decomposed, identification was deemed impossible until the development of mtDNA testing.

The crucial difference is that mitochondrial DNA doesn't provide one specific individual's DNA. The sequence is inherited from one's mother. In other words, Lt. Blassie and other lost servicemen have been identified not by their own DNA sample, but through comparison samples from one of their maternal relatives.

The lack of specificity has raised some eyebrows, said John Tonkyn, the assistant lab director at the California Department of Justice Lab.

"There are some common types of sequences. They are not unique," he said. "MtDNA should only be used as corroborative evidence."

Because of the "vanishingly small" and degraded samples that the DNA lab and the approximately 10 other non-military mtDNA labs in the country work with, there is also a risk of contamination from technician handling, Tonkyn said.

That's why mtDNA laboratories are subject to frequent audits, and they are required to keep records, show duplication of results and impose intensive contamination-control regulations.

"No lab would risk losing its reputation by not following the strictest of policies," Tonkyn said.

The lab's mtDNA policy is absolutely categorical, Couden wrote in an e-mail. "DNA analysis is used for identification in conjunction with other forms of analysis. Identifications are based on the combination of all analytical techniques available."

Mitchell Holland, the high-profile former director of the DNA lab who developed the mtDNA program and identified Lt. Blassie, concurred. "MtDNA has to be used in cases with other evidence present," he said. "There can be no positive ID without circumstantial and vicinity evidence."

National Alliance of Families co-founder Lynn O'Shea is not convinced of mtDNA's veracity or that the Army is entirely true to its own policy. "MtDNA was originally misrepresented as more accurate than it really is. It is not a good enough science," she said.

POW/MIA activists also charge that the Army passes off animal or non-American remains and accepts forged dog tags from Vietnamese bone traders as circumstantial evidence.

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