Brain from Boston played role in identifying bin Laden's body
ABC News just reported that the government used a DNA sample from the brain of a deceased bin Laden sister held by a Boston hospital to match the DNA from bin Laden's body. Which hospital? Gotta be Mecca, no? UPDATE: Yes. Channel 5 reports the sister died at Mass. General.
Meanwhile, Sean Graham tweets:
Walking from [Independent Film Festival] (and dinner after) an MBTA cop was driving by and stopped to ask us if "we'd heard the good news".
Rear Admiral tweets:
If you had "Whitey Bulger" in the pool, I'll be up L St. paying out tomorrow.
David Bernstein reports the initial leader in the most inappropriate bin-Laden utterance competition, from a political director at a Massachusetts abortion-rights group:
Osama Bin Laden is dead. Celebrate by helping Ayanna win! Free Wednesday night by chance?
Comments
Drawing red line through list
Bin LadenNot to become the first local "Deather"
but since the guy had like 50 siblings, is it possible to get a positive DNA i.d. from comparison to this sister?
Yeah my first reaction to the
Yeah my first reaction to the news was "wow, how can they be sure?" But if they can exclude his siblings by other means (in a known location, dead, different identifying features, etc.) then the combination of dna, physical appearance and location is probably unique enough.