While the stories and hidden histories of the dead stand at the heart of this book, it is important to frame these narratives against the restrictions and permissions of the ‘laws’ that governed matters of consent, harvesting and research in modern British medical research. This seemingly simple endeavour is considerably complicated by the fact that as well as direct legislation on these matters, medical practice and the ‘rights’ of the dead and dying are shaped by legislation in other areas of criminal, civil and administrative law. Official and unofficial ‘guidance’ and long-established customs also have purchase on these matters. In turn, the fact that much ‘law’ merely clarified or amended previous legislation rather than repealing it, means that ‘the law’ becomes ‘the laws’. Thus, there is often considerable scope for differential interpretations of legal permissions at any chronological point. In this sense, law matters very much for the interpretation of the stories that we will go on to encounter in the rest of this volume. This second chapter therefore explores complex issues of legality, legislation and informed consent

In this sixth chapter we explore missed disputes. A typical missed dispute arose because of delayed, missing or withheld information about the extent of the harvesting of human material and its long retention period that relatives of each dead person expected to be kept informed about, but were not. Instead, pathologists involved in checking on causes of death for coroners often took the opportunity to harvest brains to do further research. Although families knew that some human material had been retained for legal purposes to secure a court conviction in cases of dangerous driving, homicide and manslaughter charges, not everything about the extent of human harvesting was disclosed. Part I thus sets in context the liminal space of medical death, and how biotechnology made calling the time of death much more complex in the modern era. This discovery reflected the rise of neuroscience and its brain banking activities that became the new frontier of modern medical science. Part II then investigates the controversial case of the Isaacs family, which created a national outcry in 2000 after it was found that Mr Isaacs brain had been retained with 23,900 other brain material deposits for ten years or more without fully informed consent.