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I don’t understand, how is this really news?
One hundred jars of human brains taken from the late patients of a mental hospital in Austin, have disappeared from the University of Texas.
The Atlantic reports that the brains, submerged in formalin, were kept in the campus’ Animal Resources Center. The specimens date to the 1950s, when the Austin State Hospital (AHS) was known as the Texas State Lunatic Asylum. The brains revealed various medical conditions in the hospital’s patients, including burst blood vessels and brain malformations.
Dr. Coleman de Chenar, the hospital’s resident pathologist from the 1950s until 1985, collected roughly 200 brain specimens from his patients. A 1986 Houston Chronicle story reports that six institutions, including Harvard, were interested in acquiring the brains, and the University of Texas eventually won the battle.
One of the missing brains is that of Charles Whitman, the 1960s “Texas Sniper,” whose brain had a five-centimeter-long tumor. Tim Schallert, curator of the brain bank, realized that Whitman’s wasn’t the only missing specimen — when Schallert was asked to move the brains in the mid-1990s, he discovered the brains “had vanished.”
But how is that 100 missing brains is news?
The 100 cover the number missing in Senate, and not in the House.
graphic via shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.