I have to agree here. The default would be to dispose of his body in a traditional way. There could be arguments about burial or cremation or maybe some other tradition I don't know about, but no one thinks of thin-slicing the head as any kind of default in todays (or yesterdays) world. I find the question of how this got approved almost as interesting as the original story. I can only think of 3 ways to decide: 1) prior consent from a parent 2) just ask him even though his brain is not normal 3) politics. Debating the legitimacy of #2 is really just going with option #3.
