It was the kind of build up normally reserved for the launch of a Stephen King novel or a Hollywood horror blockbuster. At a hospital near you, pathology departments would offer up their grisly secrets—tiny human hands and hearts, livers and kidneys, cruelly and secretly snatched, even “harvested,” and hoarded in dirty storerooms. This was Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Damien Hirst in his formaldehyde era. The stories had been coming in dribs and drabs for months, but in the two weeks before the launch of the report of the Royal Liverpool Children's Inquiry and the report of chief medical officer Liam Donaldson's survey of organ removal and retention elsewhere, they had reached an almost ghoulish intensity.
Health secretary Alan Milburn's widely reported word for it all was “grotesque.” According to the Times (29 January), he warned the government that the Alder Hey report was the most shocking that he had read. Also on 29 January the Guardian reported a source as describing what took place as “on a scale and in a way that is horrific beyond anything anybody will have seen in this country.”
Really? More shocking and horrific than the Moors murders or the Omagh bombing? “The government is braced for violent scenes,” reported the Observer (28 January). “The contents of the reports themselves are expected to be so disquieting that telephone lines are being set up to counsel the relatives of patients who have died,” wrote Independent columnist Deborah Orr (30 January).
Without denying the obvious distress that the removal and storage of children's organs at Alder Hey had caused to relatives, wasn't the government, Mr Milburn in particular, getting things a little bit out of perspective? Was it all a cynical ploy to take the sting out of the Mandelson affair, as Brian MacArthur suggested in the Times (2 February)? Was it a warm up for the report into the Bristol children's heart deaths, as Mary Riddell suggested in the Observer (4 February)? Or did characterising Alder Hey as something dreamt up by Hammer Horror serve the purpose of the health secretary as consumer champion, hell bent on standing up to doctors and shattering the paternalistic culture of the NHS?
Certainly, Mr Milburn couldn't have hoped for a better bogeyman than Dick van Velzen, the “rogue” pathologist at the centre of the scandal. In the Sun van Velzen was “Dr Frankenstein,” in the Express a “monster,” and in the Daily Mail “Dr Liar” for “deceiving parents.” The British press pack hounded him round his native Netherlands desperately in search of a photograph. Only one was taken, and, as in all good horror tales, it was the pursuer who ended up being cornered. Daily Telegraph photographer Ian Jones, whose priceless snap was to glare out from every newspaper like the image of an Orwellian hate figure, told the Sun (31 January): “It was frightening. I was left shocked and shaken. He came at me and pushed the camera into my face, bursting my lip. I received several blows.”
The Sun's verdict was clear. “This is all about sick and arrogant people in scores of hospitals playing god,” said its leader (31 January). So far so good for Mr Milburn, who, in commenting on the reports, had said: “I want the balance of power to shift decisively in favour of the patient.” Despite accusations of terrifying patients in the Times leader (31 January) and scaremongering in the Independent (31 January), Mr Milburn's determination to manage media coverage of the Alder Hey report seemed to have paid off.
At times this determination had bordered on control freakery. To ensure journalists could not break the news embargo set for 3 30 pm on 30 January, they could view advance copies of the report only at a Liverpool hotel and at the Department of Health, where they had to hand over mobile phones and sit, five or six to a table, supervised by an invigilator. And in mid-January the public relations firm that Alder Hey had called in last August to handle the story on its behalf was dismissed. In its place, the hospital would be using COI Communications North West, a direct appointment by the Department of Health.
Unfortunately for Mr Milburn, you can spin a story only so far. Sooner or later it develops a life of its own. In the case of Alder Hey, parents have been reacting with panic—fine if you want to create a consumerist backlash against an overbearing and arrogant culture, not so fine if people stop donating organs. As Mr Milburn was proudly announcing in an exclusive article for the Sunday Mirror (4 February) his plans to revolutionise the NHS in favour of the patient, a headline in the Independent on Sunday warned “Transplants at risk as organ panic grows.” By Sunday evening, Mr Milburn had announced an organ summit to minimise the damage done by reaction to Alder Hey.
And as for Peter Mandelson, it was inevitable that some hack would somehow find a way of linking him to Alder Hey. “Mandy's sister-in-law misled bereaved mum,” claimed a headline in the Sunday Mirror, ironically on the same spread as Milburn's own exclusive article.
Figure.
IAN JONES/TELEGRAPH
Van Velzen, aka “Dr Frankenstein”