“A brain cannot be sold and transplanted”, former Forensic Medicine Institute Director Aleksej Duma said on Monday. He made those comments following information about so-called export of brains from North Macedonia for scientific purposes in the U.S.
Previously, the 360 Stepeni portal had found, on the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s website, a document from the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts’ Department of Medicine dated July 2014, authored by Duma, Gorazd Rosoklija, Professor at Columbia, and an Andrew J. Dwork of the same University.
Duma confirmed it was about a project that had been carried out in the period between the 90s and 2000s. However, he is adamant that it was absolutely not about profit.
When it comes to whether the families of the deceased persons whose brains were sent were familiar with the project, Duma didn’t give a concrete answer. Rosoklija told Telma the project had been approved by relevant ethical committees on research. As he added, there was written consent from families.