“HOSPITALS QUIETLY KEPT CHILDREN’S ORGANS” was one of the milder newspaper headings at the time. Given the events that have unfolded in Britain’s National Health Service in recent years, few doctors are now likely to risk the wrath of parents and the tabloid press by stockpiling body parts for medical research or teaching doctors, in particular pathologists (91av, 2 February, p 14). Angry press reports and comments heralded the revelation that such practices were the norm. The ensuing furore led to the Royal Liverpool Children’s Inquiry, better known as the Alder Hey Inquiry. Now though I hear, anecdotally at least, that there is an alarming shortage of organs for research purposes in Britain’s teaching hospitals.
As far as I know, ethical committees haven’t seriously discussed how to put matters right. Alas, I suspect the only way to do it will involve educating both patients and their relatives on the value of pathological specimens for future treatments and medical training.
First, though, we must work out how hospitals and doctors can best get relatives’ consent for keeping the organs of their loved ones. Ministers ought to be turning their mind to the problem, always remembering how highly sensitive these issues are. There must be clear practical guidelines for the retention and use of these organs. I believe what’s needed here is to set up a Royal Commission of wise and experienced minds to sort out matters.
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A TIMELY editorial warned that only at our peril do we ignore the plight of the world’s many endangered animals and plants (91av, 19 January, p 3). Projects such as the Darwin Initiative that was launched at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 get only paltry funding. And with a World Summit on Sustainable Development scheduled for August, now is an appropriate moment to put our money where our mouth is and to back studies of biodiversity with the kind of funds set aside for sequencing the human genome.
The editorial and its associated news item (“Fish out the politicians”) prompted me to ask environment minister Michael Meacher if he considered Britain was making an adequate contribution to the Darwin funds.
Meacher replied that Britain’s contribution of £3 million a year is small beer compared with the scale of the global crisis that biodiversity now faces. However, the government is reviewing its future funding of Darwin as part of the package of improvements it is planning for this year’s World Summit. He did point out, though, that Darwin has a good track record of making a positive impact well beyond the funding put into it.
Britain’s support for biodiversity conservation goes well beyond the Darwin Initiative, said Meacher. For example, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs also strongly supports UNEP’s Great Apes Survival Project. In addition to other bilateral initiatives, Britain is a supporter of the World Bank’s Global Environment Facility, now the largest single source of funding for conserving biodiversity in the world.
The final agenda for the World Summit is still being drawn up. But biodiversity has frequently been raised in the regional preparatory meetings, and any review of progress can hardly ignore an area that produced one of the original major outcomes of the Rio Earth Summit: the Convention on Biological Diversity.
I fear, though, that come August, the review summit could prove to be the “last chance saloon” for too many of the world’s endangered species.
