University of Texas Says It Can Account for Missing Brain Specimens

The case of the University of Texas at Austin’s missing brains has apparently been solved.

On Wednesday afternoon, after a day of much confusion, the university issued a statement that most of the 100 brains, preserved in formaldehyde in jars, that had disappeared from the basement of the Animal Resources Center had been disposed of by the university’s environmental health and safety officials in 2002, under protocols for biological waste.

Not everyone is convinced that the university’s explanation accounts for all the missing gray matter. But if accurate, the statement resolves the status of a most unlikely collection of missing items — the brains taken from mental patients in autopsies as far back as the 1950s. They were kept in heavy glass jars, each with an identification label, a diagnosis and the date of death, according to Alex Hannaford, co-author of a new book, “Malformed: Forgotten Brains of the Texas State Mental Hospital,” with Adam Voorhes, who photographed the brain collection.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/us/university-texas-austin-brains-missing.html?_r=1