Organs scandal hospital under fire

LIVERPOOL, England -- Staff at a world-renowned children's hospital at the centre of a scandal over the stockpiling of children's organs could face criminal prosecution following the publication of an official report.

Thousands of organs, heads and foetues were secretly removed from patients who died at the UK's Alder Hey hospital and stored -- sometimes against the express wishes of relatives.

Dutch cot death expert and pathologist Professor Dick van Velzen was singled out for criticism, and accused of lying to parents, stealing records and falsifying reports during his time at the Liverpool hospital.

The independent inquiry was ordered after it emerged that organs from dead children were removed and retained.

Van Velzen, who is currently on extended leave from the Westeinde hospital in The Hague and who was head of pathology at Alder Hey from 1988 to 1995, has been called before the General Medical Council and will never be allowed to work in the UK again.

He has also been reported to the UK's Director Public Prosecutions.

Four other National Health Service staff, including Alder Hey's chief executive, have been suspended, while the acting chairman of the hospital's trust and two non-executive directors of the trust have resigned.

The inquiry team, chaired by Michael Redfern QC, started to hear evidence behind closed doors last spring and presented its findings to the Department of Health in the autumn.

The 600-page report, published on Tuesday and presented to the House of Commons by Health Secretary Alan Milburn, catalogued a series of practices which were described as "unethical and illegal."

"The pain caused to the parents by this dreadful sequence of events is unforgivable," Milburn said. "I am deeply sorry."

Milburn told MPs: "For many years the hospital has made use of human hearts for research and training.

"The Redfern report says that there are now more than 1,600 children who would have died in infancy or childhood without the improvements in surgical techniques and care which were pioneered in Liverpool.

"But as the inquiry report makes clear, many of these heart were obtained without consent.

"According to the report, it appears that as well as over 2,000 childrens hearts, there were a large number of brain parts, eyes taken from foetuses, over 1,500 stillbirths of foetuses and, most disturbingly of all, a number of childrens' heads and bodies."

The Redfern report said the inquiry found no evidence that the medical profession ever tried to operate the Human Tissue Act, governing the retention of organs.

Alder Hey started a collection of hearts -- now numbering more than 2,000 -- in 1948, which became one of the most extensive in the world.

They were usually retained without consent, added the report.

A collection of foetuses - obtained from Alder Hey and stored at the Institute of Child Health, for which Liverpool University is responsible -- had at one stage 3,575 samples.

The report also gave details of a collection of children's heads and intact bodies dating back to the 1960s. It included the head of an 11-year-old boy the whole body of a child.

Documentation about the collection were "shocking and disrespectful", said the report. One entry relating to a nine-week-old foetus read: "Inflated monster. Humpty Dumpty."

Another on a 45-day-old foetus read: "Neck deeply lacerated. Pull it to pieces sometime and reject."

The report added there was no doubt that the responsibility for the collection lay with the university.

The doctor who built up the collection is named in the report as Dr Ralph Latham, who was lecturer in oral anatomy in the 1960s. He was traced to Canada but failed to co-operate with the inquiry.

The full Redfern report and summary was also published on the Internet at 1600 GMT at www.rlcinquiry.org.uk.

Milburn said that the inquiry report had been passed to Merseyside Police and the Director of Public Prosecutions, who will decide whether to pursue criminal prosecutions.

Officials are said to be preparing for a huge outburst of anger as parents find out for the first time exactly what happened at the hospital.

Many bereaved families, who discovered their children were buried without hearts, lungs, brains and other body parts say they never gave informed consent to hospital doctors or pathologists.

Milburn told MPs that the hospital's failures were compounded by the incompetence and insensitivity of the hospital and university authorities.

The university had turned its back on parents. "The pain caused to the parents by this dreadful sequence of events is unforgivable," he said, adding that those who did wrong would now be held to account.

Opposition health secretary Dr Liam Fox said it was clear from the report that Van Velzen "lied and broke the law and he must answer for that."

The existence of Alder Hey's heart collection -- described as "probably the biggest and the best" -- first emerged in September 1999 during the public inquiry into the deaths of babies at Bristol Royal Infirmary.

A month later, after hundreds of telephone calls from concerned parents, the Liverpool hospital admitted that other organs, including brains, lungs, kidneys and livers, had been stockpiled in a basement laboratory.

Milburn said: "The NHS can no longer assume that the benefits of science, medicine or research are somehow self-evident, regardless of the wishes of patients or their families.

"The relationship between patients and the service today has to be based on informed consent."

The Redfern report coincides with the publication of a report by chief medical officer Professor Liam Donaldson into the issue of informed consent and the retention of organs across the country.

The report is expected to reveal that body parts were stored for teaching and research at hospitals all over Britain.

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Alder Hey Children's Hospital
Department of Health
Redfern Inquiry Report

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