In the wake of controversy surrounding one of its former pathologists, a hospital has reached out privately to the families of children who underwent autopsies and publicly to anyone who will listen.
At the centre of the controversy is Dr. Dick van Velzen, a Dutch pathologist who practised at the IWK Grace Health Centre in Halifax for 2 years before being fired in 1998. Last year Halifax police charged van Velzen, who now lives in Holland, with “improperly or indecently interfering with or offering indignity to a human body or human remains” after children's organs were found in a Halifax storage locker. (According to the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, the charges facing van Velzen in Halifax relate to 8 organs from 1 or 2 children. Van Velzen has denied the charges, and no decision has been made on whether to seek his extradition to face the charges.) The story moved to the international stage early this year when van Velzen was accused of removing organs from the bodies of more than 850 children at the Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool, England, without their parents' consent.
In Halifax, the IWK Grace responded with a direct appeal to parents. “With this whole experience, there is a risk that parents will be reluctant to consent to autopsies,” CEO Rick Nurse said in an interview. “And only with autopsies do some families get closure.”
Nurse said the IWK Grace wanted to reassure parents that the situation in Britain was unlikely to happen here because the hospital, like all Canadian pediatric centres, has protective policies in place: documentation of all tissue and organ removal is required, and no organ can be removed without formal permission.
He added that the working environment at the IWK Grace would help prevent a physician from acting improperly because “we have a number of pathologists working quite closely.”
Nor would pathologists allow unacceptable behaviour to go unreported, said Dr. Kent Dooley, director of pathology and laboratory medicine at the IWK Grace. Van Velzen, who worked there from 1995 to 1998, was fired after colleagues expressed concern. “We had individuals willing to come forward and speak up,” said Dooley. “They didn't have that in Liverpool.”
Dr. Fred Alexander, president of the Canadian Association of Pathologists, says pathologists must have informed consent before removing organs permanently during an autopsy. He says it is normal to retain tissue samples and sometimes an entire organ for teaching purposes, but only if permission has been granted. “That is common,” he said, “but taking them willy-nilly is not.”
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Donalee Moulton
Halifax
Figure. Van Velzen: facing charges in Halifax Photo by: Canapress