Never giving up: 25 years later, one lab is still identifying 9/11 victims

Three miles north of Ground Zero, inside a lab with sterilized air and so little humidity that the simple act of breathing parches your throat, Mark Desire devotes himself to keeping a vow that turns 25 this year.“We made a promise that we would never give up,” Desire, assistant director at the City of New York Office of Chief Medical Examiner, told The Post of himself and a team of scientists, technologists and anthropologists that has been working all this time to find, identify and return remains of 9/11 victims to their loved ones.“We promised those families that we would continue to advance the technology and never give up.

That commitment is as great today as it was in 2001.“I was here then, and am here now,” Desire said.“I feel honored to be doing this work.

It’s a mission that has defined my career.”The crew, many of whom are too young to remember the horrific attack, use cutting-edge methods to wring strands of DNA out of tiny bone fragments found at Ground Zero and match them to collected profiles.They’ve built a library of biological identifiers taken from victims’ personal items, like toothbrushes and combs, in the days days after the 9/11 attack.Desire describes the aftermath of the attack that claimed 2,753 lives as “not only the largest forensic investigation in the United States but also the most difficult” — in part because “jet fuel, fire, water used to put out the fire, chemicals in the building and sunlight all … all destroy DNA.”Just last month, the 1,651st victim was identified.

(The person’s relatives requested anonymity and asked that the victim remain unnamed as well.) But there are nearly 7,000 fragments that Desire and his group have analyzed but not yet been able to match.“We’ve gone back to some bones 10 times, hoping that new technology will allow us to find DNA,” explains Desire.“If it’s a very small fragment that we’ve already tried [tech] on, and it now gives us just one chance, we...