Recently, it was found that in the early 1900s, more than hundreds of brains were obtained unethically by an anthropologist from the Smithsonian with the help of local doctors and hospitals.
An anthropologist, Ales Hrdlicka from the Smithsonian, was the head of the physical anthropology department. He collected hundreds of brains that belonged to black people for research purposes without getting any consent from their respective families, who were unaware of it. He collected those brains from the hospitals and morgues of more than 80 countries to support his research on racial differences in eugenic theory, which is considered baseless research.
Between the 1930s and 1940s, the institution collected around 300 brains internationally, with a quarter of them belonging to residents of Washington, DC. Within that quarter, 48 brains were from black individuals. According to records obtained from the Smithsonian, 254 of these brains are still housed in the Natural History Museum in Maryland.
Even though the brains are collected to understand past civilizations, they still have ethical issues as there is no consent given by the family members or the communities of those remains.
The Smithsonian appointed a human remains task force to retrieve around 30,700 human remains. The Natural History Museum said that they are working to rectify the issues and prevent their recurrence.
According to the National Museum of American Indian Act of 1989, the repatriation of other remains is facilitated.
It was difficult to obtain enough information for the institution, as the records about the people belonging to the remains and their surviving relatives are limited. As it is not possible for them to identify their direct descendants, they are working to find the communities of the descendants.
The Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Lonnie Bunch, said that they are committed to standardizing ethical issues, would retrieve the remains as effectively as possible, and would also try their best to fulfill the wishes of the communities of the descendants of the remains.
References:
1) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/office-of-the-secretary-of-the-smithsonian/2023/11/30/what-comes-next-smithsonian-new-human-remains-task-force/?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template
2) https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/interactive/2023/smithsonian-museum-washington-dc-brains-collection/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most
(Input from various media sources)
(Rehash/Rohini Devi)
