Checks and balances needed for organ retention

betrayal of the innocents, " announced the Daily Mail. The outrage expressed in Britain's newspapers on 31 January, amplified further through radio and television, lasted several days. It was triggered by the publication of findings from an inquiry into the retention of organs after necropsy at the Royal Liverpool Children's Hospital, Alder Hey. The report concluded that over 2,000 organs had been stored without parents' knowledge or consent. Many had not been used for any purpose whatever. The pathologist responsible had, according to the British health secretary, Alan Milburn, lied to parents, to other doctors and hospital managers. " He stole medical records. He falsified statistics and reports, and he encouraged other staff to do the same. " But a second report also appeared in Britain on 31 January. It confirmed that 210 other centres throughout the country were preserving a total of 105,000 organs, body parts and fetuses. In response to both documents, Milburn promised 'urgent changes' to ensure that the law governing post-mortem examinations was based on informed consent. In the ensuing furore, there were demands for far stronger measures, including criminal prosecutions of all doctors who had taken tissues from patients or cadavers. Media coverage of the reports did little to inform the debate. There were, above all, few attempts to distinguish one individual's unacceptable conduct, however extreme, from the long-established use of tissues removed at surgery and autopsy for the benefit of medical science. This was not an occasion when the broadsheet newspapers performed more responsibly than the tabloids. Seven pages of reportage in The Independent, for example, began with the headline " Basement of horrors " and a large colour photograph of the " grim and grubby " room containing remains at Alder Hey hospital. There followed a description of " grisly secrets " and of doctors throughout Britain " raiding the dead ". Barely 200 words were allocated to the importance for research and clinical practice of studies on human tissues and organs. The Guardian produced a whole-page piece on " The growth of the gruesome stockpile ". But within the text was a huge manikin showing blood-engorged organs, accompanied by perfunctory notes on " what organs and tissues are used for ". The mixed motives behind these two juxtaposed elements — to enrage readers and at the same time to explain the positive benefits of research — will have left many confused. By …