Thousands of white buckets are arranged on shelves in a deserted basement of the University of Southern Denmark, one of the biggest universities in Denmark. In the form of the colorless gas formaldehyde, each of them houses a human brain. And there are 9479 of them in total.
The brains of dying patients have been gathered by psychiatric facilities across the nation for almost 40 years, beginning in the 1980s. This collection is the biggest one ever made.
But because the brains were kept without the patients' or their heirs' permission, there has been an ongoing discussion about whether such a vast number of human organs may be taken.
The university in the city of Odense operated as the brain bank until the Danish Council of Ethics finally decided that the tissues could be used for scientific study in the 1990s.
According to some Expects, this collection has made it easier to research a variety of illnesses over time, including dementia and depression. However, the fact that it exists also highlights how stigmatized mental illness was in the past when patients' rights were weak.
Detailed documentation
After World War II, the collection was launched, and the brains of mentally ill individuals who passed away in psychiatric facilities around Denmark were taken out.
The Institute for Brain Pathology initially housed these human brains at the Reschoff Psychiatric Hospital in Aarhus.
After the post-mortem, the brain was removed so that the body could be examined and meticulous notes were made before the body was interred in adjacent cemeteries.
According to the pathologist and current director of the brain collection at Odense Martin Wierenfelt Nielsen, "all these brains have been very well documented."
"We know who the patients were, where they were born, and when they passed away," Dr. Nelson said. His diagnostic and neuropathology (postmortem) studies are also available.
We have medical histories for around half of the patients in addition to thorough reports from pathologists because many individuals spent the majority of their lives in psychiatric facilities.
Nelson stated, "We truly have a lot of metadata. We have access to the patient's brains at the same time as the doctors are treating them, so we can document a lot of what they are doing.
When Aarhus University had to transfer to new facilities in 1982 and there was no cash for brain storage, brain preservation came to an end. In such a scenario, there were discussions about ending this program, and it was even suggested that all of these biological materials be destroyed. But then, in a "rescue operation," as Dr. Nielsen put it, the University of Southern Denmark in Odense consented to house the removed brains.
The moral question
Dr. Nelson has been the collection's director for the past five years. Although he had a tenuous understanding of it, he was aware of its enormity. "When I first saw it (the reserve), I was really surprised," adds Ho.
Even while this magnificent collection was always there and occasionally the topic of whispers, it wasn't until there were plans to move it to the university in Odense that it came to the attention of the Danish people.
Political, religious, and scientific groups engaged in a heated public discussion concerning patients' rights in response to the ethical handling of human remains. The Danes had to deal with mental illness, a social issue they had overlooked.
Kanud Christensen, a former president of the National Association for Psychiatric Health (SIND), remarked that mental illness had such a stigma that many would not even bring it up if they had a sibling, parent, or parent in a psychiatric facility.
"Back then, patients spent their entire lives in hospitals. They remained there because there was no treatment for their illness, perhaps working in the kitchen or the garden. They would pass away there and be laid to rest in the hospital cemetery.
Patients in mental hospitals have minimal rights. An individual case might be handled without permission.
Christensen noted that several of the brains in the collection displayed symptoms of lobotomy and that it was quite likely that the victims' families were not even aware that their brains were being preserved. This is what we now refer to as "malpractice," although it was rather prevalent back then.
Final Decision
The controversial topic of what to do with the brain underwent multiple iterations of discussion when Christensen was president of SIND.
The underlying premise was that since the patients' and their families' agreement was not obtained before the brains were taken, it was unethical to keep them.
So they spoke of burying or perhaps destroying the organs of the patients they were associated with. However, there was no means to distinguish between each person's tomb, and it was even suggested that all the brains be interred together in one location.
After some time, the nation's ethics council determined that using the families for scientific research without their consent was morally permissible. SIND ultimately consented to this.
"At the time, it was said, 'Well, we did a really unethical thing by collecting the brains, but since we have them now, it would also be unethical to collect the brains,'" said Christensen. "should be destroyed and not used for the study.
"My main concern was that there should be a guarantee that the project was carried out in an ethical manner once the research was approved," he continued.
With some limitations, any researcher may use the brain repository and all of its documentation to create a project that is related to it. International experts are also participating, however, Martin Vernfelt Nielsen claims they must collaborate closely with Danish scientists and present their project to an evaluation committee.
A 'Great' achievement
The extra tissue removed during autopsies is embedded in paraffin blocks, and each brain is kept in a formalin bucket. They also contain lots of historically accurate microscope plates.
Dr. Nelson oversees the repository and helps researchers make the greatest use of the data by utilizing cutting-edge molecular biology methods to look at things like alterations in the DNA of the brain.
If you want to learn more about mental illness, the collection is a great scientific resource, according to Dr. Nelson.
In fact, scientists' decision to preserve patients' brains so many years ago was a 'tremendous' step for future generations of researchers, says the director of the repository. 'Maybe, some time from now, maybe 50 years or more, someone will come along and know more about the brain than we do.'
Kanud Christensen agrees that the collection holds the potential for new discoveries about mental illness.
'It's a fantastic asset,' added Christensen. These brains are so old that they came from people who didn't receive antipsychotic medications since those medications weren't present in the individuals. This allows you to evaluate the effects of the medications by contrasting these old and new brains.
They question if this stockpile will be used to its full potential, though. Research is expensive, and the majority of psychiatric studies are funded by pharmaceutical firms whose primary focus is on creating new medications rather than figuring out the root causes of mental disease.
Although he acknowledges that they have not yet achieved anything that could be referred to as "revolutionary," Dr. Nelson says that there are currently numerous initiatives happening to research disorders like dementia and depression.
But they are finally coming forward, he said. Results from these projects may not be seen for many years because they demand a long-term commitment.
Nelson claims that the collection's numbers are what matter most. This is special because we won't be constrained to just a few brains if we want to study a complex illness like schizophrenia, for instance. For this experiment, we'll have 100, 500, or perhaps a thousand brains, and we'll be able to see what the brain damage is like under various circumstances. If not, we wouldn't be able to accomplish it.
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