Stolen brains

last updated 8 January 2015

London

British doctors and morticians took up to 100,000 brains from human corpses for research from 1970 to 1999 without the families’ consent, a government report revealed this week. The government ordered an investigation after a woman found out that her late husband’s brain had been removed before his burial, a violation of his religion. Such an “affront to families who have lost a loved one” is no longer practiced, said the government’s chief medical officer, Liam Donaldson. But it was routine until 1999, when Parliament passed a law requiring patient consent forms for organ donation. About 20,000 of the brains are still being preserved in hospitals and universities, while the rest were apparently examined and then destroyed.