Bristol baby inquiry calls for new rules on organ removal

The public inquiry into the Bristol baby heart surgery disaster will propose a change in the law today to tighten controls over the retention of organs at post-mortem examinations.

The public inquiry into the Bristol baby heart surgery disaster will propose a change in the law today to tighten controls over the retention of organs at post-mortem examinations.

An interim report, the first to be published by the £20m inquiry, is expected to say that the present regulations over removing organs are so complex that doctors have been confused and parents have been caused huge distress.

Thousands of children who had died in hospital had organs removed without the knowledge or consent of their parents, the media disclosed last year. The organs were kept for research but in many cases parents had buried their children without realising part of them was missing.

The theme of the report is that parents should be at the centre of the process. It is expected to say that respect for parents and children must be paramount, while recognising the benefits to science from studying organs after death.

"The very people who should have been at the centre of the process - the parents - were excluded from it," a source said.

The scandal arose in March 1999, a week before the Bristol inquiry started its public hearings. Parents who had lost children in the disaster, in which surgeons at the Bristol Royal Infirmary continued to perform heart surgery despite their high death rate, discovered by chance that organs had been retained. Soon afterwards other hospitals admitted to the practice including Great Ormond Street and the Royal Brompton in London, the Birmingham Children's Hospital and Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool.

Many parents of children who died requested the return of the organs and had to arrange a second interment to bury them with their offspring. The public outcry over organ removal led the Government to set up a national inquiry under Professor Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer.