This week's reading also discusses the use of DNA technology but in a more positive light than last week. Last week we critiqued the use of DNA technology in order to determine one's ancestry, however Wagner presents DNA technology with the purpose of identifying remains as innovative and possibly even a tool with which to support social repair in postwar Bosnia. The ICMP proposed a new wide scale model of DNA testing. This would require them to collect thousands of samples of blood from any live relatives in order to determine a best match for the missing persons. However there were some issues as many members of families were missing which made it hard for ICMP to have the right samples to compare dna to. Even with the advances in DNA technology however many samples remained unmatched. Other methods used to aid in identification included showing family members the possessions and clothes that had been found with the body. Sometimes looking at these possessions or photos of the possessions were the determining factor in identifications. At the end of chapter four, Wagner states that rather than being on opposite sides of objectivity, DNA technology and memory, imagination, and supposition were both necessary tools that had to be used together in order to come to their findings.
Another point in the reading that I also found interesting was how the advocacy associations for finding those who were missing used excel sheets to “synthesize data” for each missing person, even those who prior to the war had little more than a birth certificate as evidence of their existence. The creation of this database seemed to help give more reality to each person who was missing by acting as an “ ‘instrument, a tool, a means to an end-- Action’ “.
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