The Ethical Dilemma That Comes With Denmark's Psychiatric Brain Collection

Per CNN, around 2018, the Danish brain collection was moved from the Risskov Psychiatric Hospital to the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. Knud Aage Lorentzen had retired in 1982 and since then, not much had happened with the assemblage. Stored in rows upon rows of buckets and preserved in formaldehyde, the brains were to

Per CNN, around 2018, the Danish brain collection was moved from the Risskov Psychiatric Hospital to the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. Knud Aage Lorentzen had retired in 1982 and since then, not much had happened with the assemblage. Stored in rows upon rows of buckets and preserved in formaldehyde, the brains were to be overseen by pathologist Dr. Martin Wirenfeldt Nielsen.

On the formidable task of moving just shy of 10,000 human brains, Wirenfeldt Nielsen, said (via CNN), "The whole collection was just standing there, buckets on top of each other, in the middle of the floor. And that's when I saw it for the first time ... That was like, OK, this is something I've never seen before." Prior to that point, Wirenfeldt Nielsen knew of the cohort of brain samples, but he failed to realize the sheer size and scope of what he was charged with overseeing. The most pressing issue at that point, according to  Wirenfeldt Nielsen, was how to efficiently move them.

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