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Old 21st Jul 2014, 05:44
  #583 (permalink)  
mickjoebill
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: UK/OZ
Posts: 1,886
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Forensic view on victims

Forensic dentist, former assistant surgeon to Oz army, Dr Griffiths interviewed on ABCTV today.

Says the reported delay in refrigerating bodies does not affect victim identification because visual identification has proven time and again to be inaccurate. Decomposition of 5 days, in his experience of the Tsunami, does not affect victim ID.

He gave an example of the Bali bombing, where 18 families had positively identified their loved ones by visual reference, but the bodies were fortunately, not released until DNA was processed.

Of these 18 victims, 9 were wrongly identified by the visual method by their families

Sadly infants take longest to identify as they have no dental records.
He says 3 weeks is typical for such incidents.

He commented that following Lockerbie there is conjecture, but no evidence if anyone can survive a similar breakup at high altitude. Unless there are survivors it is conjecture, he said.
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