Ethical, legal and social issues raised by human brain banks

Based on the research meth-ods of literature review and philosophical re-flection, this article points out the deficien-cies and problems in the current research of brain banks: lack of nature analysis of brain banks and human brains; insufficient discus-sion of ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI) in the process of brain bank implementation - which has become the main research goal of this article. The article firstly clarifies the for-mation process of modern brain banks and briefly introduces the current development sta-tus of brain banks in the UK, the US and China, as well as the different types of modern brain banks. Next, the nature of brain banks and hu-man brain samples are analyzed through an analogical model. Then, the ELSI issues at dif-ferent stages are analyzed according to three stages: recruitment of donors, acquisition and storage of human brain tissue samples, and re-lease and use of human brain tissue samples. Last, in the conclusion section, the main ideas of this paper are reiterated and questions for further reflection are presented.