Current Event 19 By JM

Justin McCarthy

Mr. Ippilotio

Forensics 12H
Current Event 19- Review on New York Times Brown’s Article

Due March 19th 2018

Brown, Patricia Leigh. “They Died Near the Border. Art Students Hope to Bring Them Back.”

The New York Times, The New York Times, 2 Mar. 2018. www.nytimes.com/2018/03/02/arts/design/new-york-academy-of-art-arizona-border.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FForensic%2BScience&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection.

Upon reading Patricia Leigh Brown’s article “They Died on the Border” the main impression that I took away from this article was that I was very impressed with the author’s work. Thus because I liked this work so much with the work that the author put into it, I found this review that she made to be very interesting to read for my latest current event. Therefore this article emphasizes the forensic reconstruction particularly the face with scientific accuracy. She states this when she also highlights its purpose because when you do this it helps in cases where decomposition has rendered a face that is found to be unrecognisable. She states in her article that because people do not spend enough time on the matter, the matter itself has become a major issue with imigrants near the southern US- Mexico border. Although the number of people attempting to enter has decreased the number of people who die near the border has increased with what’s happened to our country in the last year with the madness that has occurred with Donald Trump being the United States President and all his problematic policies.

The main purpose is to ensure that these people in search of better lives don't lose their identities in the process. The process that recreating faces has is that it can be helpful for identifying people's DNAs. It can be used domestically with decade old homicides and abroad with soldier identification. Therefore from this article that is very well done, I think it would be interesting to study history and not only see paintings to people but have a realistic feel of what they actually looked like because you don’t know what a person is perceived like unless you have a clear photo that resembles there features: such as Julius Caesar and King Henry the third. Therefore, Brown points out the fact that our new technology saves people from falling through generation is  something that I find very interesting and there should further advances in forensics and in other fields which allow people even after death to be noticed and give closure.

Though I enjoyed reading Mrs. Brown’s review on the matter, and though I believe that the article was very well written, it was not perfect because there were more questions left than answered which were covered within her article. Therefore while she will not here my view, the one thing that I believe the author could work  on in the future would be to see the author add a personal case and opinion to see if this matter could be really used. I say this because the article was rather broad and didn’t give me the reader much victory since it didn’t discuss how this method has lead to people being identified or how it gave closure to families because it only vaguely summarizes it. The article seemed to talk about the same thing a lot when I wished it gave better description and engaged the reader more. Although the topic was interesting the way the author presented the results was a little boring and left me wanting more detail. I chose this article because it spoke to me personally with the many problematic issues that are going around our world right now as well as the fact that I love the New York Times. I enjoyed reading this article and I find this matter on the subject very interesting to read.