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HISTORY

Why does Denmark have the world’s largest collection of brains?

Almost 10,000 preserved brains, collected over four decades in the 20th century, are still used today by researchers in Denmark.

Why does Denmark have the world's largest collection of brains?
A researcher takes a box with human brain fragments from a fridge in the laboratory of the Bispebjerg hospital in Copenhagen. Photo: Sergei GAPON / AFP

Countless shelves line the walls of a basement at Denmark’s University of Southern Denmark in Odense, holding what is thought to be the world’s largest collection of brains.

There are 9,479 of the organs, all removed from the corpses of mental health patients over the course of four decades until the 1980s.

Preserved in formalin in large white buckets labelled with numbers, the collection was the life’s work of prominent Danish psychiatrist Erik Strömgren.

Begun in 1945, it was a “kind of experimental research,” Jesper Vaczy Kragh, an expert in the history of psychiatry, explained to AFP.

Strömgren and his colleagues believed “maybe they could find out something about where mental illnesses were localised, or they thought they might find
the answers in those brains”.

The brains were collected after autopsies had been conducted on the bodies of people committed to psychiatric institutes across Denmark.

Neither the deceased nor their families were ever asked permission.

“These were state mental hospitals and there were no people from the outside who were asking questions about what went on in these state
institutions,” he said.

At the time, patients’ rights were not a primary concern.

On the contrary, society believed it needed to be protected from these people, the researcher from the University of Copenhagen said.

Between 1929 and 1967, the law required people committed to mental institutions to be sterilised.

Up until 1989, they had to get a special exemption in order to be allowed to marry.

Denmark considered “mentally ill” people, as they were called at the time, “a burden to society (and believed that) if we let them have children, if we
let them loose… they will cause all kinds of trouble,” Vaczy Kragh said.

Back then, every Dane who died was autopsied, said pathologist Martin Wirenfeldt Nielsen, the director of the collection.

“It was just part of the culture back then, an autopsy was just another hospital procedure,” Nielsen said.

The evolution of post-mortem procedures and growing awareness of patients’ rights heralded the end of new additions to the collection in 1982.

A long and heated debate then ensued on what to do with it.

Denmark’s state ethics council ultimately ruled it should be preserved and used for scientific research.

An employee works on human brain fragments in the laboratory of the Bispebjerg hospital in Copenhagen. Photo: Sergei GAPON / AFP

Hidden secrets

The collection, long housed in Aarhus, was moved to Odense in 2018.

Research on the collection has over the years covered a wide range of illnesses, including dementia, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.

“The debate has basically settled down, and (now people) say ‘okay, this is very impressive and useful scientific research if you want to know more about
mental disease’,” the collection’s director said.

Some of the brains belonged to people who suffered from both mental health issues and brain illnesses.

“Because many of these patients were admitted for maybe half their life, or even their entire life, they would also have had other brain diseases, such as
a stroke, epilepsy or brain tumours,” he added.

Four research projects are currently using the collection.

“If it’s not used, it does no good,” says the former head of the country’s mental health association, Knud Kristensen.

“Now we have it, we should actually use it,” he said, complaining about a lack of resources to fund research.

Neurobiologist Susana Aznar, a Parkinson’s expert working at a Copenhagen research hospital, is using the collection as part of her team’s research
project.

She said the brains were unique in that they enable scientists to see the effects of modern treatments.

“They were not treated with the treatments that we have now,” she said.

The brains of patients nowadays may have been altered by the treatments they have received.

When Aznar’s team compares these with the brains from the collection, “we can see whether these changes could be associated with the treatments,” she
said.

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HEALTH

’No quick fix’ for Danish cancer waiting lists: health minister

Health Minister Sophie Løhde said on Thursday that she “deeply regrets” missed deadlines for bowel cancer treatment at Aarhus University Hospital, but that the government does not have an immediate fix for the problem.

’No quick fix’ for Danish cancer waiting lists: health minister

Danish law requires cancer patients to be operated on within two weeks of the decision to operate being made.

Broadcaster DR recently reported that 182 patients had waited too long for an operation at Aarhus University Hospital (AUH). Following DR’s report, a Region Central Jutland survey found that 293 patients had waited for more than the two weeks prescribed by law over the past year.

Løhde was asked at a briefing on Tuesday whether bowel cancer patients at AUH can now expected to be operated on within two weeks.

“In reality, that should have happened the entire time. I can’t stand here and guarantee that it will happen again tomorrow or the next day, as much as I’d like to,” she said.

“What I can guarantee is that this has the utmost attention on the part of the government.

“That’s why we have acted resolutely and on Friday presented a regeneration plan for the entire cancer treatment area, where we are saying we want to get to the bottom of this. We want everything out in the open,”she said.

The plan referenced by Løhde was presented by the government at the end of last week following the release of the Region Central Jutland survey.

It includes a request for the Danish Health Authority to review waiting times, capacities and compliance with waiting lists for cancer treatment in each of Denmark’s five regional health authorities. The review must be completed by July 1st.

Regional authorities must also review how they inform patients of their rights, the government has demanded.

Additionally, Regions must live up to their obligations to seek alternative treatment opportunities for patients in other locations if waiting times cannot be met.

READ ALSO: What exactly is wrong with the Danish health system?

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