Well it’s about freaking time

Why does this news make me happy? Read on:

Former Director of the Forensic Biology Department of the Office of the

Chief Medical Examiner of New York City Robert C. Shaler’s WHO THEY

WERE: Inside the World Trade Center DNA Story: The Unprecedented Effort

to Identify the Missing, which resulted in the identification of 1,591

victims of the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center attack, to

Elizabeth Stein at Free Press, for publication in October 2005 (world).

Still don’t get it? Because the OCME’s story, up till now, hasn’t really been told in book format, and Shaler — who ran the Forensic Biology Department for years before getting an offer he couldn’t refuse to head up a new forensic science program at Penn State — is certainly the person to do so, since Chief ME Charles Hirsch seems reluctant to commit any story whatsoever to print (though lord, I wish he would. Oh, do I wish he would. Because there hasn’t been a seriously good ME memoir since Milton Helpern’s, who built the Office into the first class organization it was until scandal ruined it for a while, leading to Hirsch’s arrival in the late 80s.)

Full disclosure: I spent the summer of 2002 interning at the Medical Examiner’s Office, though not with the Forensic Biology Department. And I saw firsthand what a dedicated effort the OCME made towards identifying every WTC victim they possibly could.

This story must be told.