U.S. woman sues over harvesting of brother’s brain

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A woman has sued the largest county in Washington state for harvesting the brain of her dead brother for research without obtaining permission from next of kin, according to court records obtained on Tuesday.

In a lawsuit filed 10 days ago in Pierce County Superior Court, Robinette Amaker of North Carolina claimed that the brain of her deceased brother, Bradley Gierlich, was taken from his body in 1998 at the King County Medical Examiner’s office.

Amaker, who is seeking unspecified monetary damages, said that the brain and other tissue samples were sent to Stanley Medical Research Institute, an organization based in Bethesda, Maryland that provides brain samples for research into schizophrenia and bipolar disorders.

Amaker and her lawyer were not immediately available for comment.

Stanley Medical did not return calls seeking comment, but a statement on its Web site said, “Stanley Medical Research Institute has never knowingly obtained any donation of brain or other tissue without the full consent of available next of kin.”

James Apa, spokesman for the medical examiner’s office, cited a previous statement by the agency saying that consent was given for 255 cases of brain donation in the county. Stanley Medical had contracted with King County between 1995 to 2002 to obtain brain samples.

“Defendants took the property (brain) in a wrongful and tortuous manner, and a demand for its return would have been useless,” the lawsuit said.

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