“Whereas a Knowledge of the Causes and Nature of sundry Diseases which affect the Body, and of the best Methods of treating and curing such Diseases, and of healing and repairing divers Wounds and Injuries to which the Human Frame is liable, cannot be acquired without the Aid of Anatomical Examination…”
Thus begins the law that governs the treatment of dead bodies and human tissue in Ireland. If the language seems archaic that’s because it was written in 1832. It was meant to put a stop to grave robbing. One of its most vocal supporters was Daniel O’Connell.
This Anatomy Act was repealed in England in 1984 and in Northern Ireland in 1992. The Oireachtas hasn’t got around to it yet.
And, as a result, real people in Ireland continue to suffer entirely preventable trauma. As Aoife Hegarty’s fine report for Prime Time Investigates showed last week, bereaved parents are still having to face the distress of discovering that their babies’ organs have been incinerated or retained without their consent.
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The gaiety of the nation was augmented last week by another scandal related to what happens in Irish hospitals. We were treated to Marc MacSharry’s texts to an erstwhile Fianna Fáil colleague: “Ye fairly tried to f**k me there pouring water all over it, praising (Fine Gael minister Frank) Feighan and the others. It would sicken yer hole.”
This is funny until you remember what it is about: services for cardiology patients at Sligo University Hospital. The squabble was over the most important thing for machine politicians: which of them gets to claim credit for “delivering” services on which the lives of their constituents depend.
The outrageous and inhumane treatment of grieving parents highlighted by Hegarty may seem to be unconnected to the sickness or otherwise of MacSharry’s hole. But in fact they are intimately related. For what we see here is the way a clientelist political culture encourages gross negligence. While TDs are obsessing about what one student of the Irish system called “imaginary patronage”, they are also failing in their basic responsibility to pass legislation that protects citizens from abuse.
The retention and disposal of organs has been a public scandal in Ireland for a quarter of a century now. It came to light in the late 1990s, when it was revealed that hospitals had been secretly supplying the pituitary glands of dead babies to pharmaceutical companies for the manufacture of human growth hormones.
[ Doctor removed from post over organ retention controversy returns to work in HSEOpens in new window ]
In April 2000, Micheál Martin, then minister for health, established an inquiry under Anne Dunne SC. But he refused to give it statutory powers. After nearly five years and expenditure of around €20 million, the Dunne report was presented to the new minister Mary Harney in March 2005. We were told that it would be published “in a matter of weeks”. It wasn’t. The Dunne report was effectively suppressed on the advice of the attorney general, who was apparently concerned about the possibility of defamation proceedings.
Instead the Government commissioned a law lecturer, Dr Deirdre Madden, to go through the 50 boxes of files gathered by the Dunne inquiry and produce a report that avoided naming names or assigning blame.
This in itself was a massive failure of government: parents whose babies’ organs had been sold off without their knowledge or consent were left without redress or accountability. But at least there was one consolation: this scandal would never happen again.
It wouldn’t happen because, of course, the Oireachtas would act on its clear and urgent responsibility to legislate. The Dunne report recommended that it be made explicitly unlawful to retain or dispose of organs without the consent of the next-of-kin, that next-of-kin be allowed to sue individual doctors and hospitals for breaking the law and that an inspector be empowered to police the implementation of the rules.
But none of this happened. In the 17 years since the Dunne report was presented to Mary Harney, the Oireachtas has done effectively nothing to protect ordinary citizens from distress.
The result of this gross negligence is entirely predictable. One in three hospitals audited by the HSE does not even have a written policy on postmortem consent. One of Dublin’s major maternity hospitals, the Coombe, does not even keep a register of retained organs.
In 2020 alone the organs of 18 babies delivered at Cork University Maternity Hospital were sent abroad for incineration along with clinical waste, without the knowledge or consent of bereaved parents.
This contempt for basic decency is an indictment of attitudes within the medical profession. But it is also an indictment of the collective laziness of our legislators.
Last week, after the Prime Time revelations, the Department of Health said the enactment of a Human Tissue Bill is a priority. But for many of those we pay to make our laws the priority is very different: being able to tell your constituents that you got them services they should be entitled to anyway.
The problem with the parents of dead babies is that there are just not enough of them. They don’t form a significant interest group. They are not a voting bloc.
They’re just human beings suffering through a trauma. In the anatomy of the Republic they are a disposable appendix.