A complex DNA testing process is giving closure to families throughout the Gulf Coast who lost loved ones during Hurricane Katrina.
Six labs are completing the testing that began in Dec. 2005 and in one month helped identify almost 30 victims.
The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals and the Louisiana State Police Crime Laboratory is overseeing the process.
DNA Identification Coordinator Amanda Sozer said the tedious process is run very carefully.
“We run the tests in duplicates. We run quality-control checks,” she said. “I’m very confident in the DNA testing, and it’s important families know the testing process and the controls so they can feel confident.”
Victim samples are collected from the Carville morgue, catalogued, prepared for shipping and sent to labs.
Dave Oehler, director of sales and marketing at Reliagene Technologies in New Orleans, one of the labs studying the samples, said the DNA can come from a variety of things, depending on the condition of the victim.
“If the deceased was found in their house, we can use DNA from personal items they may have used – hair from a brush, skin cells off a toothbrush,” he said. “Those are probably the two primary samples, besides trying to get a direct DNA sample from the deceased.”
Bone samples are sent to the Bode Technological Group based in Virginia and the International Commission of Missing Persons in Bosnia.
“Each sample is divided in half and sent to both,” Sozer said. “This way, it is brought back quickly, and we can check for accuracy.”
Buccal, or cheek, swabs of family members are sent to Bode, Reliagene and Orchid Cellmark Inc. in Nashville, Tenn. And the University of North Texas Health Sciences Center Laboratory studies personal items such as hairbrushes or toothbrushes.
Sozer said geneticists from the National Institute of Health and other major universities contact families who help draw family trees to be used in matching victims’ DNA with the buccal swabs.
Sozer said they are looking for “cold hits” – matches that are at least 99.9 percent sure of the identity.
Sozer said data generated from the labs are stored on a secure server through a software program called DNAVIEW that is accessed by data reviewers at the Find Family Call Center.
“It’s a software program that allows us to screen the profiles from the bones against the profiles from the family members,” she said. “We identify potential matches, and then from there we further investigate those matches.”
Once a body’s identification is confirmed, the parish coroner signs the death certificate. The state medical examiner then authorizes release of the body.
Sozer said she is satisfied with the project’s results so far.
“We’ve identified 27 so far, and we’re working on more every day,” she said. “Every time we get more data back, we do screening and identify matches.”
Sozer said for the project to work, they need multiple family members.
“People have the misconception that they only need to send one family member in,” she said.
Oehler said the family samples are critical.
“The wider range of family samples we can compare to the deceased person, the more likely we are to identifying the deceased person,” he said.
Sozer said there are a little fewer than 100 bodies left in the Carville morgue, but more than 2,100 people are still reported missing.
“We want to target our efforts on those that are truly missing,” she said.
Oehler said the project is not going to end soon.
“It’s really fascinating work. We’ve done some pretty good work in at least giving some finalities to the families,” he said. “The project is going to continue to go on until we’ve exhausted every avenue to identify these deceased victims.”
 
Contact Marissa DeCuir at mdecuir@lsureveille.com