
-
How a Brazilian chief is staving off Amazon destruction
-
Meme politics: White House embraces aggressive alt-right online culture
-
China launches military drills in Taiwan Strait
-
US senator smashes record with 25-hour anti-Trump speech
-
Brazil binman finds newborn baby on garbage route
-
US senator smashes record with marathon anti-Trump speech
-
Trump advisor Waltz faces new pressure over Gmail usage
-
Niger junta frees ministers of overthrown government
-
Trump set to unleash 'Liberation Day' tariffs
-
Boeing chief to acknowledge 'serious missteps' at US Senate hearing
-
Real Madrid hold Real Sociedad in eight-goal thriller to reach Copa del Rey final
-
Nuno salutes 'special' Elanga after stunning strike fires Forest
-
PSG survive scare against Dunkerque to reach French Cup final
-
Sundowns edge Esperance as crowd violence mars quarter-final
-
Nottingham Forest beat Man Utd, Saka scores on Arsenal return
-
Elanga wonder-goal sinks Man Utd as Forest eye Champions League berth
-
Stock markets mostly advance ahead of Trump tariffs deadline
-
US movie theaters urge 45-day 'baseline' before films hit streaming
-
Saka scores on return as Arsenal beat Fulham
-
Third-division Bielefeld shock holders Leverkusen in German Cup
-
Ball-blasting 'Torpedo bats' making waves across MLB opening weekend
-
Newsmax shares surge more than 2,000% in days after IPO
-
Thousands of Hungarians protest against Pride ban law
-
GM leads first quarter US auto sales as tariffs loom
-
Tesla sales tumble in Europe in the first quarter
-
No 'eye for an eye' approach to US tariffs: Mexico
-
NFL club owners back dynamic kickoffs, delay tush push vote
-
Trump 'perfecting' new tariffs as nervous world braces
-
Trump nominee says to press UK on Israel arms
-
French court says Le Pen appeal ruling could come before presidential vote
-
The battle to control assets behind Bosnia crisis
-
Prabhsimran powers Punjab to IPL win over Lucknow
-
Mass layoffs targeting 10,000 jobs hit US health agencies
-
Tiger's April Foolishness: plan to play Masters just a joke
-
Myanmar quake toll passes 2,700, nation halts to honour victims
-
Turkish fans, artists urge Muse to cancel Istanbul gig
-
US seeks death penalty for accused killer of insurance CEO
-
UK govt moves to block sentencing guidelines for minority defendants
-
Trump puts world on edge as 'Liberation Day' tariffs loom
-
Swedish journalist jailed in Turkey kept 'isolated': employer
-
Stock markets advance ahead of Trump tariffs deadline
-
Gulf between Everton and Liverpool has never been bigger, says Moyes
-
Finland to withdraw from anti-personnel mine ban treaty
-
UK vows £20 million to boost drone and 'flying taxi' services
-
Ford's US auto sales dip in first quarter as tariffs loom
-
Digging for box office gold, 'A Minecraft Movie' hits cinemas
-
Southampton boss Juric desperate to avoid Premier League 'worst team' tag
-
Thailand rescue dogs double as emotional support
-
Five takeaways from Marine Le Pen verdict
-
Stock markets split ahead of Trump tariffs deadline

Grey area: chilling past of world's biggest brain collection
Countless shelves line the walls of a basement at Denmark's University of Odense, holding what is thought to be the world's largest collection of brains.
There are 9,479 of the organs, all removed from the corpses of mental health patients over the course of four decades until the 1980s.
Preserved in formalin in large white buckets labelled with numbers, the collection was the life's work of prominent Danish psychiatrist Erik Stromgren.
Begun in 1945, it was a "kind of experimental research," Jesper Vaczy Kragh, an expert in the history of psychiatry, explained to AFP.
Stromgren and his colleagues believed "maybe they could find out something about where mental illnesses were localised, or they thought they might find the answers in those brains".
The brains were collected after autopsies had been conducted on the bodies of people committed to psychiatric institutes across Denmark.
Neither the deceased nor their families were ever asked permission.
"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.
At the time, patients' rights were not a primary concern.
On the contrary, society believed it needed to be protected from these people, the researcher from the University of Copenhagen said.
Between 1929 and 1967, the law required people committed to mental institutions to be sterilised.
Up until 1989, they had to get a special exemption in order to be allowed to marry.
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.
Back then, every Dane who died was autopsied, said pathologist Martin Wirenfeldt Nielsen, the director of the collection.
"It was just part of the culture back then, an autopsy was just another hospital procedure," Nielsen said.
The evolution of post-mortem procedures and growing awareness of patients' rights heralded the end of new additions to the collection in 1982.
A long and heated debate then ensued on what to do with it.
Denmark's state ethics council ultimately ruled it should be preserved and used for scientific research.
- Unlocking hidden secrets -
The collection, long housed in Aarhus in western Denmark, was moved to Odense in 2018.
Research on the collection has over the years covered a wide range of illnesses, including dementia, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.
"The debate has basically settled down, and (now people) say 'okay, this is very impressive and useful scientific research if you want to know more about mental disease'," the collection's director said.
Some of the brains belonged to people who suffered from both mental health issues and brain illnesses.
"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 tumours," he added.
Four research projects are currently using the collection.
"If it's not used, it does no good," says the former head of the country's mental health association, Knud Kristensen.
"Now we have it, we should actually use it," he said, complaining about a lack of resources to fund research.
Neurobiologist Susana Aznar, a Parkinson's expert working at a Copenhagen research hospital, is using the collection as part of her team's research project.
She said the brains were unique in that they enable scientists to see the effects of modern treatments.
"They were not treated with the treatments that we have now," she said.
The brains of patients nowadays may have been altered by the treatments they have received.
When Aznar's team compares these with the brains from the collection, "we can see whether these changes could be associated with the treatments," she said.
Y.Aukaiv--AMWN