Danish university boasts world's largest collection of human brains

The permission had never been taken

After autopsies on the remains of those admitted to psychiatric institutions around Denmark had been completed, the brains were gathered. No permission was ever sought from the deceased or their families.

"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.

Patients' rights were not a top priority at the time. In contrast, according to the University of Copenhagen study, society felt it needed to be safeguarded against these individuals. The law mandated sterilization of those committed to mental facilities between 1929 and 1967. They had to obtain a specific exemption before 1989 to be permitted to get married.

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.

Several brains belonged to patients with neurological disorders and mental health problems.

"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 tumors," he added.

Four research projects are currently using the collection.