Unforgivable

Thousands of patients who died at hospitals across the UK may have had body parts illegally removed without the knowledge of their grieving families, according to a shocking report published yesterday.

More than 100,000 hearts, lungs, brains and other organs are being held by hospitals, many of them taken from patients whose relatives have no idea they have buried an incomplete corpse, the Government's Chief Medical Officer concluded.

For decades, hospitals ''ignored and deviated from'' the law governing the removal and retention of body parts during post-mortem examinations, said Professor Liam Donaldson.

Doctors stripped body parts from patients, including the head of an 11-year-old boy, and preserved the bodies of stillborn babies, then disposed of them as ''clinical waste'' in a way which Prof Donaldson said would shock the public.

And 16,000 organs removed during coroners' post-mortem examinations may have been kept for teaching, research or simply stored for no purpose, in breach of the law.

The full scale of the NHS organ scandal was revealed in investigations which health chiefs admit will rock public trust in the medical profession even further.

Thousands of relatives may now demand to know if their loved ones were stripped of their organs - and then have to go through the agony of a second funeral to bury the body parts.

Changes in the law to ensure relatives are giving ''informed consent'' to the removal and retention of organs from dead patients were announced by Health Secretary Alan Milburn yesterday.

A report into the hospital which sparked the scandal, the Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool, accused pathologist Professor Dick van Velzen of ''systematically stripping'' organs from dead children.

Details of the Alder Hey report have been passed to Merseyside Police and the Crown Prosecution Service, and Professor van Velzen is likely to face criminal charges.

Other staff at the hospital may also face charges. The trust's chief executive and chief laboratory scientific officer were suspended last night.

The General Medical Council is holding an emergency meeting on Friday to consider whether to suspend the disgraced pathologist, who is also facing trial in Canada over the possession of dead children's organs.

The 600-page report into the once-renowned children's hospital also revealed that Prof van Velzen, who has moved to Holland, had lied about his qualifications, falsified post-mortem reports and deceived his bosses during his seven-year career at Alder Hey.

Mr Milburn made a public apology to the families of children who had died and been stripped of their organs at Alder Hey, and vowed: ''Those who did wrong will now be held to account.

"The pain caused to the parents by this dreadful of sequence of events is unforgivable.''

The report into Alder Hey, chaired by Michael Redfern QC, severely criticised both Prof van Velzen and hospital bosses who they said, failed to prevent the pathologist's worst excesses.

The professor built up an ''unnecessary, excessive, illegal and unethical'' collection of body parts over his seven years at the hospital from 1988 to 1995.

Hospital chiefs had added to parents' pain by their ''inept handling'' of the scandal, with some families having to go through the agony of second, third and even fourth funerals as more of the dead child's body parts were found.

The report said: ''Professor van Velzen must never be allowed to practise again.''