Need for informed consent in organ donation

December 3, 2008

there is a debate that surrounds Einstein’s brain, and that is the manner in which it wound up in the pathologist’s laboratory. Thomas Harvey, who conducted the autopsy, it seems, never received clear permission from anyone in Einstein’s family to remove their dead relative’s brain.

A half-century later Mozelle Purifoy, a Long Island woman, has taken Mt. Sinai Medical Center, in Manhattan, and Suffolk County to court, claiming that her deceased husband’s brain was removed without her consent. It turns out that the Suffolk medical examiner’s office has an arrangement with Mt. Sinai to send human brains for research. (Newsday)