By Pte John Wellfare
PROPOSAL of a DNA repository for Aircrew, first reported by Army in March this year, developed into a world-first system with expressions of interest from several other nations.

Capt Adrian Smith, RAAF institute of Aviation Medicine, has been the driving force behind developing the repository, which aims to aid in the post-mortem identification of aircrew killed in aviation accidents.

Capt Smith said the repository would make definitive identification of remains easier, as well as sparing grieving family members additional distress.

"The only way you can identify remains by DNA is to compare them to a reference DNA sample and one way of doing that is to have blood stored in a repository ahead of an accident," he said.

"The only other way required bringing parents, brothers, sisters and children to give a tissue sample, to get family DNA, but that's extremely distressing to family members."

Capt Smith said certain procedures had to be followed to ensure the legality of the repository, which had so far collected about 250 lots of blood.

"The most important legal step is [ensuring] that it complies with the Privacy Act, which is the Commonwealth legislation that governs the collection, storage and release of personal information," he said

"The person is identified by photographic military ID and steps are taken to make sure samples are not mixed up.

"The sample is identified with the person's name, date of birth, service number, a signature and a barcode."

"That's placed in an envelope, labelled with all those personal identifiers, it's sealed with tamper-evident stickers and then it's locked in a safe.

"There's a legal barrier to the compulsory collection of blood for a DNA, but because this is voluntary, it follows a form of consent, it can be introduced without breaching privacy legislation."

Capt Smith said while more circumstantial forms of identification, such as a flight manifest, would have been accepted in the past, a modern-day coroner would almost certainly require DNA.

The system implemented by Capt Smith caught the attention of the international community in the fields of medicine, science and identification of remains.

"I've presented this model at the International Aerospace Medicine conference in the US and I also presented it at the Interpol Disaster Victim Identification conference in France."

.