How GPs can help to stem our brain drain
Dissecting diseased grey matter is crucial to medical science, but a lack of healthy controls is hampering important research
5th September 2018
By Kemal Atlay
Professor Jillian Kril needs brains. Healthy human brains.
For more than 20 years, she has been collecting and dissecting the brain to unlock some of the big mysteries in medical science: Is there a cure for dementia? Is it possible to reverse the damage of alcohol abuse on brain tissue?
Diseased brains have been relatively easy to acquire — the NSW Brain Tissue Resource Centre (BTRC), where she is director, houses about 500 preserved donor cases — but it is experiencing a chronic shortage of healthy controls.
“Controls are vital because