Gene Codes and the World Trade Center
March 2004
It has been a difficult decision to open up this web site and to post information about the work that has consumed much of the attention of Gene Codes for the last two-and-a-half years, since September 2001. On the 29th of that month, we first met with senior staff of the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner [OCME]. We were there to discuss the difficulties they faced in the DNA matching needed to identify the victims of 9-11 at the World Trade Center.
Before the end of that first day, we were asked to take the lead in designing a data comparison and tracking system that today is being used to identify almost 20,000 human remains from 2,750 people. Gene Codes Forensics, Inc., a subsidiary of Gene Codes Corporation, developed the Mass-Fatality Identification System [M-FISys, pronounced like emphasis]. It correlates the DNA profiles from the remains with profiles from over 5,000 personal effects of the victims (toothbrushes, combs, etc.) and nearly 7,000 cheek swabs collected from surviving family members. Many of the remains have been tested and re-tested multiple times with different laboratory techniques.
This has been a staggering job. It is not one that we sought, and it is not a contract that we bid on. But when asked to help in this humanitarian effort, we could certainly not refuse. We also had no way to estimate how complex the job would be, since many of the problems that we have been asked to solve were not obvious until we ran up against them. For instance, the fact that remains were exposed to temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees (F.) means that many remains yield only partial profiles at best. But despite the difficulties and complexities, we have developed new technologies combining short-tandem repeat analysis, mtDNA sequencing and SNP comparison that go far beyond any bioinformatics tools that were available in this field when we began. The software professionals working for us here in Ann Arbor and in New York worked extremely hard, pushing through holidays and weekends to release updates to the software nearly every week. I could not be more proud of the staff at this company, and I honestly don't know of another software development team in the world that could have built the forensic identification tools that we have created at anywhere near the quality and speed that has characterized this project.
We made a decision early on to not use any of the World Trade Center work in any of our marketing or PR. All of my staff and shareholders are keenly aware of the need to respect the grief and the dignity of the families of the victims, and we did not want to appear to be capitalizing on of the deaths of so many innocent people. Despite weekly requests, we refused all press coverage and interviews until the 1,000th victim was identified in late April, 2002. At that point, only two reporters were given access to our staff, including Adrienne Burke, editor of Genome Technology. Then we again refused all of the many follow-up requests until carefully selected reporters were given limited access to our work at the time of the first anniversary of the attack. Each of these public disclosures was made only after significant debate and soul-searching, and in coordination with the Director of Forensic Biology and other officials at the OCME.
But this work has also had an impact on you, our 16,000+ Sequencher users. When almost all of our engineering and software Quality Assurance efforts were re-directed to the World Trade Center Identification Project, ongoing efforts on other projects were drained of their resources. The project to "carbonize" the Macintosh version of Sequencher for Apple Computer's OS X should have been completed in late 2001, but it is still in final beta-testing as I write this. We certainly have the staff and skill to complete this task, but as president of this company, I cannot use financial need as a moral justification for pulling any staff off of the M-FISys development team to go back to the Sequencher project. Not while only 53% of the victims have yet been identified and their remains returned to their families for burial.
When asked directly by our clients, we have not hidden the reason for our delays. Some have been understanding and even actively supportive. We received this from a user in Australia
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002
Hi Marie,
Reading that article (thanks for the link) was a real eye-opener - here I am hassling you about an upgrade to Sequencher, and there is GeneCodes and employees slaving away on what must be a rather gruelling and demanding project. I have to apologise for my impatience in light of all this (and I mean it).
Gotta go, thanks again for the link and for alerting Robin to my inquiry.
Seeya,
Michael
Others have been less patient. Here is an e-mail we received from a user in the western United States.
Hello good folks,
While I am waiting (again) for the Mac OS 9 environment to start up so that I can use Sequencher, I thought I would send a note to you asking when the OS X version will be available. Your software is the LAST program that I use not to have gone OS X compatible. And that's quite a statement, I use all manner of programs, ALL of which are OS X carbonized at the minimum, most are native. What gives? I have to tell you that after spending what for me was a lot of money for your software, I am disappointed at the pace of developments and improvements. Do you have a beta version that I might help with testing, or even an alpha? I happy to test and bug-hunt for you. I'm just tired of having another, and in this case crappy, operating system on my computer. When you release the OS X version of Sequencher, that will no longer be a necessity. If a new Sequencher is not forthcoming, it will be awfully tempting to switch to a competitors' product. I would like an honest answer to my concerns and not the "We're working on it... It's in testing... Impossible to give you a date" kind of response - if I gave those answers to my chairman and funding agencies, I would lose my job.
Richard
It is only because of this sort of reaction that today we are adding a link to a Gene Codes Forensics web site. As I said at the beginning of this letter, this has not been a decision that we have made lightly. By including this information on our web site, we intend no disrespect or insensitivity to those who lost loved ones on 9-11, but we also feel that we owe it to our users to explain why Gene Codes Corporation has not been giving the industry-leading levels of technical support and rapid development that you have come to expect. Our primary business is still one of bioinformatics and we are not abandoning that mission, but we are balancing our resources as judiciously as we can in light of the moral weight of the effort in New York City.
Thank you for your patience and your understanding.
Sincerely,
Howard Cash
President, Gene Codes Corporation