China’s Rush to Dispose of Dead Compounds Agony

Alex 9/11/08
Forensics Block 2 Even Mr. Ippolito

Wong, Edward. "China’s Rush to Dispose of Dead Compounds Agony." The New York Times 24 May 2008. 11 Sep. 2008 .

On May 12th, this year, the greatest natural disaster to hit China in over thirty years struck the Sichuan province. The calamity killed over 60,000 people and left nearly 5 million Chinese displaced and homeless. The sheer number of deceased left the Chinese government with no choice but to take action. In order to dispel the threat of water contamination and disease, the government began to burn the bodies. Within eight days, an estimated 80% of the unknown and missing victims of the earthquake’s aftermath had been cremated or tossed into unmarked graves. This left China’s forensic scientists with little time to identify the earthquake’s corpses. As forensic teams under Liang Weibo and Professor Li raced against the clock to identify the bodies, the situation proved futile. Government officials were unable to pull the missing, deceased, or even dental records of victims from the earthquake because the government did not even store such files in their database. This left Chinese forensic scientists with only one option in identifying the deceased: sight. But after two to three days, the already mutilated bodies began to decompose and even the closest family members could not recognize their loved ones. In the end, only 4 of the 600 victims that the forensic teams examine are identified. Even though modern sciences such as forensics are spreading globally, to countries like China, it is having little impact, much less benefit on its people. This is why it is crucial to further develop and improve scientific fields such as forensics—to make a better tomorrow.

This article has illustrated to me how messed up the world came be at times. This incident only occurred four months ago, yet the Chinese government was not even able to pull out simple dental records of its citizens! Only 4 of 600 (0.006%) people were identified. This article speaks to me and to all humanity that we as a species can believe that we have come a long way, but in reality we are way behind. We need to look at this article and realize that enough is enough. We have got to move forward.

This article held my attention from beginning to end. There is not a word wasted in it. The real strength behind this article was that this is all real and happening in present day 2008. In a way, it is really cool, but at the same time, it is just shocking. This actually happened just four months ago, on the other side of the world and I did not even know about it until now! I do not think there were any weak points mentioned in the article and that there is no room needed for improvement.