Brebeuf College School

Science Department

Biotechnology/Ethics

HOSPITAL STORED FETUSES WITHOUT PARENTS' CONSENT

  Liverpool Facility in Center of Scandal Again

 

  

  LIVERPOOL, England, NOV. 14, 2000 (ZENIT.org).- Liverpool's Alder Hey

  Children's Hospital is at the center of another scandal after the bodies of

  400 fetuses were discovered.

 

  The hospital was already being investigated over the retention of internal

  organs from 800 babies without parental consent. The fetuses were mainly

  the result of stillbirths or abortions.

 

  Ed Bradley, spokesman for an Alder Hey parents' group, Pity2, said he was

  "horrified" at the storing of fetuses.

 

  He said: "Alder Hey knew about this and should have made this known months

  ago."

 

  The fetuses were sent to the Liverpool hospital by other hospitals in the city.

 

  They were collected by Dick Van Velzen, the pathologist at the center of

  the organ retention scandal at the hospital, who also carried out pathology

  work for other hospitals.

 

  He worked at the hospital between 1988 and 1995 and the fetuses date back

  to that time.

 

  Some have been used for research at Liverpool University.

 

  A spokesman for Alder Hey said that parents' groups had been informed of

  the collection of fetuses in December 1999. He said that talks were going

  on to decide what should be done with them.

  ZE00111401

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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