Funeral home mistakenly sends brain to family of deceased

[Liberal_in_LA]

Grieving Family Gets Brain of Dead Relative Sent to Them by Funeral Home
Family Says Brain Was Included in a Bag of Personal Effects

A New Mexico family is suing two funeral homes after their deceased relative's brain was included in a bag of her personal effects.

A New Mexico funeral home gave a dead woman's brain to her family."A brain is not what you'd expect with the return of personal effects, which included the clothing she was wearing at the time of her death and the jewelry she had on," said Richard Valle, the New Mexico-based attorney representing the family, only identified by initials in the lawsuit.

The family did not want to be named in order to "minimize disruption" to their lives, according to the court documents. They declined requests for an interview.

The dead woman reportedly died in a car crash in Utah in September.

Valle said that sometime during the process of transporting her body from Utah to New Mexico for burial, her brain was put in a plastic bag, labeled "brain" and later given to the family. :wow:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/funeral-home-sends-dead-relatives-brain-family/story?id=9502105

[Mz Pip]

1. The woman dies in a car accident

Why would her brain be removed from her body in the first place?

I can see doing a thorough autopsy in the case of a suspicious death where testing has to be done on tissue samples - but for a car wreck? :wtf:

[ezgoingrl]

2. Ah, that's a good question and I have the answer.

Waaay back in the early 90's, I was a courier for a pathologist. One day I was delivering orders to the good doctor for an autopsy, I noticed the orders said something to the effect of "no head" or "without head". So I immediately think, "WHERE IS THIS GUY'S HEAD??" but then I realized that his head was to be excluded from the autopsy, the guy wasn't missing his head. So, I'm guessing in this case there weren't any orders to exclude this woman's head from the autopsy and that makes sense if she was far away from her family. The autopsy was completed, during which the brain was removed (to be weighed and examined) and then someone notices that ooops we forgot to put that with her body and someone tried to CYA but failed miserably.