Update on OBL DNA test: More speculation that a lab was standing by to prepare and analyze DNA samples using new technology capable of providing a rapid result.
Typical lab-based DNA matching tests like this can take up to 14 days; they’re painstaking and need to be repeated several times to ensure the sample’s not contaminated from any other DNA sources. But that’s not necessarily the only way to do these tests: late in 2010, a University of Arizona team presented research on a machine that can do the analysis in just two hours in a largely automated way. It’s possible that knowing they were engaged on a mission to capture bin Laden, U.S. forces arranged for access to a machine like this to be on quick alert — probably for flying blood, cheek cells, and other samples taken from the body to the lab for expedited analysis.
Update: I just remembered that some time ago it was conjectured that OBL had Marfan’s syndrome, a rare disease of the connective tissue. Victims typically have gaunt features, long limbs and long slim fingers. It was thought that President Lincoln may have had Marfan’s syndrome. If OBL did have the disease, then the DNA screen could have easily been expanded to include a screen for the mutations in the fibrillin-1 (FBN1) gene known to cause the disease, and in turn used as additional prior evidence for calculating the probability of the dead man’s identity.