Except there was no shredding, as MIT confirmed. [Update: Aug 22/16 MIT posted confirmation that the data weren’t shredded; see: http://bcs.mit.edu/news-events/news/additional-information-august-20-2016-further-rebutting-luke-dittrich%E2%80%99s-allegations . Dittrich conveniently left out Dr. Corkin’s statement,“We kept the H.M. stuff” from the transcript, but it’s at the end of the recording. The level of deceit here is astounding, as is the lack of ethics. But this shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s read what I think is an embarrassment-to-its-publisher book.] She was sick (literally) and well tired of Dittrich at this point (just listen to the recording, he implicates himself — Dr. Corkin died recently and that means that he’d been hounding her like this for around a decade). The H.M. scientific information was published, and had NOT been private. That is Dittrich’s unsubstantiated yellow journalism at work. One need only do a search through the scientific literature to count how very many scientists there were with whom Dr. Corkin collaborated and shared H.M.’s data. Dittrich is really reaching, here. She shared H.M.’s scientific information with many. She kept H.M.’s personal information extremely private, much to Dittrich’s chagrin. Don’t confuse the two, as it seems Dittrich has. She had already given answers to him. It wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to meet Henry while he was alive. Why? Why his interest in this particular amnesic patient’s info? He felt entitled to it, simply because his grandfather had rendered him amnesic. Dr. Corkin would not allow it, unless he followed legal requirements and signed a contract. Dittrich refused to sign the contract. He felt entitled to bypass the legal contract just as he, in the book, describes himself as having felt inspired by his grandfather’s illegal scaling of a New York City bridge, to sneak up the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, having waited for a moment when the guards were distracted by a laser light show, because, you know, he is just that special that he deserved to have this particular purview of the stars to reflect upon the meaning of his life and himself and his…well, upon Luke Dittrich. We are talking about someone with a huge sense of entitlement here, folks. But back to how that relates to H.M….Now what more did he want from the retired, and dying, Dr. Corkin? The data? “The files?” What files? Hell, if I were Dr. Corkin, being only human and dying of cancer, and having completed my work with H.M., I would probably have been prepared to say just about anything to get this perennial pest off my case at that time. A commentator claimed that MIT was using Dr. Corkin’s cancer as an excuse. I think that is nonsense, and incredibly inhumane. She mentioned shredding when Dittrich pestered her while she was on chemo. Coincidence? What would YOU do if you were on chemo and feeling fatigued and not quite yourself and the perennial pest was back yet again? Henry had been dead for eight years by this time. Just a thought…. Someone else wrote that she was condescending during this exchange. Again I would have to disagree. She was merely direct with him. Any data would in fact not go to someone like Dittrich — not a writer who was seeking the info for completely personal reasons. And now I can add: not a writer of merely controversial, libelous books that provide no objective sources whatsoever. No, the data would go to where it had always gone: to be shared with respectful neuroscientists who are bound by ethics and bound by science to provide clear sources and objective ones, at that. So congrats to Dittrich for writing another inaccuracy-laden, controversial book. If this is his career path, then I suspect…ah, never mind. Time will tell, as time has already told us.