WHEN the devastating tsunami struck the Indian Ocean in December 2004, it was not DNA that identified most of the victims but traditional forensic methods such as comparing dental records. In Thailand, for example, DNA techniques put names to less than 1 per cent of the victims.
The scale of the disaster made the detection effort particularly difficult. Teams were dealing with thousands of bodies in a hot, wet climate, where roads and other infrastructure had been destroyed and lab facilities were virtually non-existent. In other recent disasters, such as 9/11 and the massacres in the former Yugoslavia, DNA identification…
