More Brains Needed

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that more people need to donate their brains to medical research if cures for diseases like dementia are to be found and are urging healthy people as well as those with brain disorders to become donors. 'For autism, we only have maybe 15 or 20 brains that have been donated that we can do our research on. That is drastically awful,' said Dr Payam Rezaie of the Neuropathology Research Laboratory at the Open University. 'We would need at least 100 cases to get meaningful data. A lot of research is being hindered by this restriction.' Part of the problem, according to Professor Margaret Esiri at the University of Oxford, may be that people are reluctant to donate their brains because they see the organ as the basis of their identity. 'It used to be other parts of the body that we thought were important,' says Esin. 'But now people realize that their brain is the crucial thing that gives them their mind and their self.' Dr Kieran Breen, of the Parkinson's Disease Society, said over 90% of the brains in their bank at Imperial College London were from patients, with the remaining 10% of 'healthy' brains donated by friends or relatives of patients. 'Some people are under the impression that if they sign up for a donor card that will include donating their brain for research. But it won't,' says Breen. 'Donor cards are about donating organs for transplant, not for medical science.'"

Comments

Grow up

[Alarindris]

When you're dead, you're dead. It's not like your brain wont be rotting in the ground anyway.

Get over the fact that the universe doesn't care about you and help science!

Re:Ethics, line 1...

[Chris_Jefferson]

Well I know lots of members of the medical profession, and I can say this is total rubbish, for 3 reasons: 1) Doctors appreciate organ doners. They know very little about you when you are rushed in, but if they know you are a doner they know something good about you. 2) There has been rumours of doctors getting in trouble for doing just what you say, and no-one wants to risk getting in trouble, so they err on the side of caution. 3) Why the heck would a doctor decide to not do an expensive operation? The hospital gets paid when they do expensive operations. I can honestly say YOU are scaremongering, and in the process possibly risking other people's lives. If you do die, getting the organs as quickly as possible is crucial, so your scaremongering could well kill people, and that makes you a shit. Sorry.

FUD... in the most vile form.

[Klootzak]

Even more despicable than trying to create fear, uncertainty and doubt of Open-Source, are people who try to do the same thing against those who would save lives... I hope you sleep well girlintraining.