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No missing brains here, says UT health campus in San Antonio

Austin American-Statesman (TX) - 12/15/2014

Dec. 13--Equal parts of clarity and confusion emerged Friday on the question of what happened to human brains once stored at the University of Texas for research and educational purposes.

Meanwhile, it appears doubtful that one brain _ that of notorious UT Tower sniper Charles Whitman _ was ever part of the collection.

The Austin campus received about 200 brains of deceased mental patients under a 1986 agreement with Austin State Hospital, but only about 100 remain. The missing brains made national news last week, as UT officials searched for answers. Forty to 60 jars, some containing multiple brains, were incinerated in 2002 because the brains were in poor condition, officials say. It's unclear how many, if any, were transferred to other locations.

The UT Health Science Center at San Antonio said Friday it can't find records or specimens indicating that it received human brains from UT-Austin. Officials at the Austin campus said last week that there had been "anecdotal suggestions" that some brain specimens were sent to the San Antonio health campus.

"After interviews with former and current employees, the Office of Communications at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is unable to locate records or specimens to verify published reports suggesting that the Health Science Center received brain specimens from UT-Austin curators," said Will Sansom, a spokesman for the San Antonio campus.

A spokesman for the Austin campus said, however, that the possibility has not been ruled out, adding that officials continue to investigate reports that some brain specimens were sent to other universities or health institutions.

"Thus far, we have not found any records or documentation to corroborate accounts that some specimens were shared with the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio in the 1990s," UT-Austin spokesman Gary Susswein said. "But we continue to look at this possibility."

Although some UT-Austin faculty members have speculated that the collection might have included Whitman's brain, that seems unlikely based on articles in the American-Statesman and other publications, some dating back decades. A team of medical specialists examined the brain after having Whitman's body exhumed in Florida, where it had been buried after the August 1966 rampage. Whitman took 16 lives.

The pathologists, members of a special commission named by Gov. John Connally, wanted to examine his brain because of a discrepancy in the findings of a state hospital pathologist, Coleman deChenar, who had performed the autopsy on Whitman.

DeChenar described a small, nonmalignant tumor. But deChenar's slides of the tumor sections apparently showed a malignant, fast-growing tumor. So the commission's pathologists had the body exhumed in an effort to resolve the discrepancy. But they found no tumor of any kind, according to their September 1966 report.

Whitman had left a note requesting an autopsy to determine whether he had a brain tumor. Medical specialists said it's doubtful a growth would have had anything to do with his impulse to kill, asserting that untreated mental illness and his upbringing in a sometimes violent family would probably have been much greater factors.

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