Parents outraged by organ sales of 32 Irish hospitals

The Irish government is facing a public outcry over its health service after the country's largest hospital admitted it sold glands from dead children without par-ental consent.

St James' Hospital in Dublin was the 21st Irish hospital to confirm revelations by drug companies Novo Nordisk and Pharmacia that 32 Irish hospitals routinely supplied them with pituitary glands, used to produce growth hormones, until 1986.

The row appeared to be the tip of the iceberg as hundreds of distressed parents across the country discovered that other organs were removed from their babies and children without their consent.

While the routine removal of pituitary glands stopped in 1986 with the discovery of a synthetic alternative to growth hormones, the removal of major organs continued well into the 1990s and early 2000.

Fionnuala O'Reilly, 40, who lost her 6-month-old son Michael to a rare coronary disease in 1994, found out only five years after the infant's death that his heart and lungs had been removed during a post-mortem in Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin.

"Until today, they can't even confirm whether they took more or not," she said.

Michael's organs, which had been kept in a jar on hospital shelves, were eventually returned to her, and the family buried them with their son's original remains.

This week, she reacted with shock as hospital after hospital admitted it used to provide pharmaceutical companies and medical researchers with children's body parts without asking parents.

"It is appalling to think of the number of hospitals involved," she said, "so far we always thought there were only one or two."

Maurice Gueret, a general practice physician and editor of the Irish Medical Directory, explained that the medical profession used to follow different ways of thinking.

"Doctors in the past treated dead bodies like old washing machines useful for old parts," he told the Irish Sunday Times, but stressed "it was carried out with a benevolent intent."

O'Reilly vehemently rejects this argument, adding "The beneficial outcome simply does not justify the failure to seek informed consent."

Indeed, the issue of "informed consent" has become the battle cry of Parents for Justice, an organization she set up with three other mothers to establish the truth about what happened to children's bodies in Ireland's 59 acute hospitals. O'Reilly thinks the families of 180,000 deceased could be affected.

Over the last two years, the organization has grown increasingly critical of Health Minister Michael Martin. Having lost an infant son himself in 1999, he first responded to the group's pressure and set up a private, non-statutory inquiry headed by Anne Dunne in 2001.

Despite his early encouragement, however, Martin allowed the inquiry to work at a snail's pace and to present only one slender progress report in four years, while missing four self-imposed deadlines and burning up 15 million euros (US$18 million) of taxpayers' money, PFJ says.

On Tuesday, a terse five-line statement from St James' Hospital confirmed it had supplied glands to pharmaceutical companies and insisted the hospital was cooperating with the Dunne inquiry.

Although payments for the pituitary glands were described as "minor" by Novo-Nordisk, it remains unclear how much hospitals gained in the deal -- or how much the drug companies profited from the sale of the human-derived growth hormones.

Parents for Justice has dis-missed a new telephone helpline set up by the health ministry on the issue as "just another smoke-screen."

Irish courts have little to go by when asked to rule on the matter. A new European Union directive on tissues and cells, to be implemented by 2006, excludes the issue of organ removals.

The government advises citizens on its website that "the law is unclear on the issues arising where organs are retained for research purposes without consent of the person. In most cases there is no law."