Reflections on Assisting With the 9/11 World Trade Center DNA Identifications

NIST's John Butler helped design new DNA tests to be used with highly fragmented samples.

View as a Web Page Taking Measure Blog Reflections on Assisting With the 9/11 World Trade Center DNA Identifications By John Butler, a NIST Fellow and special assistant to the director for forensic science On Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, I walked to work from my home in Olde Towne Gaithersburg, Maryland, and arrived at my office shortly before 9 a.m. I had just returned from an International Society for Forensic Genetics meeting in Germany where I had spoken on a new DNA test our NIST team had developed. My task that morning was to prepare some samples in our laboratory of this new DNA test to ship to our collaborators in the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner (NYC OCME) Forensic Biology Laboratory. However, these particular samples were never sent, as the attention of the NYC OCME — and the rest of the world — moved to the aftermath of the events on that fateful morning. Read More MORE FROM THIS SERIES Analyzing the Aftermath of the Twin Towers Aircraft Impacts Aug. 27, 2021 LI consider myself lucky to have been able to perform contract engineering research and consulting for my entire career. The work environment has been somewhere between industry research and academia. I've had opportunities to work with recognized experts at universities, national laboratories, in government and in industry. Read More Putting Together the Big Picture for the World Trade Center Disaster Investigation Aug. 25, 2021 Imagine assembling a jigsaw puzzle of more than 14,000 pieces without an image on the box showing what the final picture will look like. Imagine that important pieces were missing and needed to be searched for. And imagine that this puzzle was four-dimensional, involving time as well as space. Read More

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