He helps disaster victims reclaim identity
He was the son of wheat farmers, a boy who grew up weathering long Canadian winters and the bitter winds that swept across the Saskatchewan prairie he called home.
It made Frederick Bieber. Even now, decades later, he said doesn't need to bundle up for Boston winters. ''No gloves. No hat. I just don't need it," he said. And so, when Bieber saw two dead bodies pulled from an icy lake while he was in college, he did not turn away. He turned toward them, helping the local pathologist identify the two frozen men.
''They were brought in by police," Bieber recalled, ''and we had to undress them and find out who they were."
Thus began his interest in pathology and what has become a lifetime of work dealing with what Bieber calls ''the dark side of the human persona." Missing persons. Paternity cases. Rapes. Murders. Mass graves and natural disasters.
When airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Bieber was among those setting policy for how the dead would be identified; his work may also help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Bieber, an associate professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and a geneticist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, has seen pretty much everything over the years. On any given day, he may be teaching medical students about wound patterns left behind by knives, or participating in an autopsy on a stillborn fetus, or traveling to the Balkans to help identify missing persons.
He is an unassuming giant in the world of forensic pathology, as comfortable testifying in a murder trial as he is counseling parents about why their first child died and the genetic likelihood that it will happen again.
''What draws a pathologist to pathology?" he asked recently. ''I think you'd probably have to go through a few years of psychoanalysis to find out why you're drawn to a career like that. I haven't bothered to do that. But to me, it's a chance to participate in useful science and technology, to help others, and to give something back."
Helping to identify the dead isn't something that most people consider when they think about giving back. But Bieber knows by experience how his work can help a grieving family move on and begin putting the past to rest. ''Closure may be cliché to some," he once wrote, ''yet it has real meaning to others."
That meaning was especially obvious in the days after 9/11. As loved ones began posting fliers seeking the missing, Bieber joined a team of scientific and medical experts hoping to find out just who had died in the towers and airplanes. Their group, called the World Trade Center Kinship and Data Analysis Panel, faced unprecedented challenges.
For starters, unlike a plane crash, authorities had no idea exactly how many were in the buildings on that day. The total number of tissue fragments recovered -- some 20,000 in all -- was staggering and the complications many. Conditions at the site -- jet fuel, fire, and temperatures exceeding 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit -- compromised the DNA that scientists found.
Bieber and his 9/11 panel colleagues recently wrote in the journal Science that these circumstances forced them to rethink their approach. New software was developed to help organize the overwhelming amount of data. Unable to rely on routine DNA testing, the panel recommended other techniques that focused on shorter pieces of specific regions of DNA, called mini-STRs. A blueprint for future crises began to develop.
Bieber said this blueprint has helped Gulf Coast authorities currently trying to identify victims of Hurricane Katrina. But he said the challenges there are more reminiscent of those he faced in the war-torn Balkans. Families are displaced, entire homes, and in some cases medical records have been washed away. Once again, people are waiting for answers, to bury loved ones, or what's left of them. It's a place Bieber understands well.
''This is very serious business," he said. ''No room for error and time is of the essence."
Home: Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, and raised on a wheat farm, Bieber now lives in Roslindale.
Family: His wife, Jane Bieber, is a physical therapist. They have two Scottish deerhounds, Morning Glory and Moonflower.
Education: Earned a bachelor's degree from the State University of New York in 1972, a master's in genetics from the University of Rochester School of Medicine in 1976, and a doctorate in human genetics from the Medical College of Virginia in 1981.
His second career: If Bieber hadn't become a doctor, he said he would likely be a heavy equipment operator. ''I grew up driving tractors when I was three," he said. ''It was a lot of fun, in fact." Now he enjoys high-performance cars, like his 1986 Porche 911. He has a competition driver's license.
His Army life: Bieber joined the US Army Reserve in June 2001 -- just months before 9/11 -- and has the full respect of Col. Brion Smith, the director of the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Md. ''He actually shaves his beard and puts on his uniform and goes where the Army sends him," Smith said.
''He listens. He thinks. He'll tell you if he doesn't know. But more often than not, he does know."
His science: Bieber became interested in forensic pathology in the late 1980s when he testified during a rape trial. He said he realized then just how powerful DNA and other genetic information could be in solving crimes. He has since testified in many trials and served as co-chair of Governor Mitt Romney's Council on Capital Punishment.
