A rather macabre idea that came to me a few days ago to potentially aid in more rapidly identifying human remains. While dental records can help to positively identify a deceased individual the identification process, it is a tedious process. One potential means of reducing the time required to identify a body, would be to implant materials in the gum line of patients creating a bar code like structure. Such a bar code would allow forensic teams to reduce the potential number of dental registries that would need to be examined for final confirmation.
There would be a range of social challenges of creating such implants and associated databases. Military organizations might consider it for their personnel.
To avoid privacy concerns, no central database of the bar codes would need to be held, instead dentists could be issued a range of numbers that could be given to patients, and in the case of an unidentified body being found law enforcement could upload the all or part of the identification code and dental offices could supply the associated record(s) if they determined that one of their patients matched the identification code.
No comments:
Post a Comment