Newsletter April 2007

Tucked away in a tiny room at the end of a rundown street in central Lima, behind a 300 year old building that is now the National Neurological Science Institute hospital, lies a little known museum whose main attraction and focus are diseased brains. Diana Rivas, a neuropathologist who studies neurological diseases and psychiatric disorders, runs the museum and claims to have the only public display of human brains in the world.

Unlike prestigious brain banks around the world which do not let people in, Rivas lets anyone wander around and take a look for themselves for the small fee of only 30 cents US. Rivas is proud to have had about 4,000 visitors last year, mostly school children, because her main objective is to educate. "The main purpose is for people to see what brain sicknesses look like, and realize that many of them can be healed or prevented," she said while showing how a healthy brain differs from one that has been damaged by drug abuse. "It’s true. Alcohol and drugs kill brain cells."

The museum is not for the faint of heart. On display are brains of people that have passed away due to AIDS, blood clots, hemorrhages, heart attacks, several kinds of tumors, etc. There are many samples from people who died of trichinosis, the most common brain disease in Peru, which is caused by eating infected undercooked meat, usually pork. The museum also has a rare specimen that died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human variant of “mad cow” disease. There are also several human fetuses with neurological disorders.

Rivas only takes a few seconds to look at a brain to know what afflicted its owner. "This one belonged to an alcoholic...This one belonged to somebody who had Alzheimer's disease," she says as she walks past rows of brains stacked on shelves.

She museum started collecting diseased brains in 1942 and now has a hefty 2,998 specimens and growing. The Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center at McLean Hospital in the United States is the largest brain bank in the world with close to 7,000 specimens. Unfortunately, it’s not open to the public.

Source: Reuters, Yahoo News

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• Newsletter December 2007
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