Inquiry highly critical of pathologists for removing human tissue
The inquiry found that relatives were seldom asked for their consent and in the majority of cases the removal and analysis of organs was "unnecessary and inappropriate".
This begs the question as to why the tissue samples were collected in the first place.
To understand this you need to think back to the post-war period and the emergence of the nuclear industry.
Although the dangers of radiation were recognised from an early stage, there was uncertainty about the long term effects on human health. Workers in the nuclear industry are screened for exposure to radiation but the effects of contamination cannot always be measured from external checks. Plutonium can lodge in organs like the lungs, liver and bone and analysis of tissue samples after death was intended to reveal any hidden dangers to health and safety from this emerging industry.
In the 1950s there was also concern that fallout from nuclear weapons tests may have exposed the public to danger, especially from strontium 90, an isotope produced only by nuclear fission. In the human body it gets concentrated in the bone. A UK wide research project collected samples of bone from more than 6000 people, mostly children who died up to 1973. The results of research showed that there was hidden threat to human health.
The Redfern inquiry found that all the pathologists who gave evidence to the inquiry had been profoundly ignorant of the law and did not realise that consent from relatives should have been sought. They believed they had carte blanche to remove tissue and organs for whatever purpose they saw fit.
This has disturbing echoes of the . Michael Redfern QC also conducted that inquiry into the removal of body organs from 800
children at the Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool. It concluded a
pathologist "systematically stripped" organs from dead children.
The government said today that consent was now a fundamental principle and such practices would not happen today.
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