CILHI Reorganized

The U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory (CILHI) and the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting have been reorganized and are now known as the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC). Army Brigadier General W. Montague "Que" Winfield has taken command of the 425 military and civilian personnel of the JPAC.

New Tool to Help
JPAC Scientists
by: Shelley Belgard

Forensic scientists at the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) have a new tool in their task to identify missing servicemen from World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. A technique called Odontosearch allows scientists to compare a missing individual's dental pattern to other examples in a database of 40,000 patterns. Odontosearch was developed by JPAC forensic odontologist Dr. Bradley Adams.

X-rays are usually the most reliable way of identifying a missing person. Unforunately, they are not generally available for missing World War II and Korean War soldiers. In place of x-rays are dental charts and notes written by hand and thus, vulnerable to human error.

Odontosearch is very similar to mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) testing. Like mtDNA testing, Odontosearch helps narrow the field for identification by utilizing a database of reference samples.

With Odontosearch, two types of searches are available, detailed and generic. Each type of search requires codes from one of two datasets to be entered for each tooth in a database. The Odontosearch database is available at the JPAC website www.cilhi.army.mil.

When performing either a detailed or generic search, it is important to remember that Odontosearch does not give you the name of a missing soldier, it generates a dental pattern.