Draft legislation regulating the removal and disposal of human organs and tissue will be sent to Government within months, the Department of Health indicated yesterday.
The legislation was called for in the Madden report on postmortem procedures, published last year, following revelations about the retention of organs of dead children by hospitals without parents' consent. It emerged that some organs were stored for years and subsequently incinerated.
Dr Deirdre Madden's report found that postmortems were conducted according to best standards and no "intentional disrespect" was shown to deceased children or their families. But she said that communication between hospital staff and parents was poor, with people not being told that organs might be retained at a postmortem.
Between 1976 and 1988, almost 14,000 pituitary glands were collected in hospitals and supplied to two pharmaceutical companies for the manufacture of human growth hormone. About 10 per cent of these were collected from children.
Dr Madden called for "clear and unambiguous legislation to ensure that such practices cannot happen again in the future without their [ parents] knowledge and authorisation".
In July, the department opened a public consultation period to assist in the development of proposals for human tissue legislation. When that consultation period closed last Wednesday evening, some 16 submissions had been received.
The submissions were required to address issues such as the regulation of hospital post-mortems and the removal, retention, storage, use and disposal of tissue. The public were also asked to make suggestions on the manner in which consent should be sought from parents or next of kin for the retention of organs. Moreover, they were asked how the legislation should support the rights of bereaved families.
The department is also considering the inclusion of provisions which would ban the commercial exploitation of human tissue for transplantation. A spokeswoman for the department said the 16 submissions were being analysed and there would be discussion with interested parties in relation to the proposed legislation.
"The department aims to send the general scheme and heads of the Human Tissue Bill to Government by the end of the year," she said.
