PROFESSOR Alastair Burt is worried and he doesn't mind admitting it. The professor of pathology at Newcastle Medical School fears that today's report into the Alder Hey children's hospital organs scandal could trigger a backlash against doctors - and make it more difficult to obtain consent to remove tissue and organs for legitimate medical reasons.

Horror stories of how thousands of organs were removed from dead babies without their parents' knowledge have filled newspaper columns and TV screens.

Today, the media storm about the Liverpool hospital will reach its peak when an independent report into the scandal is published.

It is expected to be followed by Health Secretary Alan Milburn ordering sweeping changes in practice and policy to ensure patients give informed consents to such practices.

Like many senior NHS clinicians, Prof Burt, who teaches pathology to medical students in the region, has been shaken by the lurid stories coming out of the North-West.

The idea of removing human tissue without the full consent of the family is an anathema to the modern-day medic, according to Prof Burt, who claims that an Alder Hey situation could not happen in the North-East health service that he knows.

"We have a very different culture now and quite rightly so. In this university we pride ourselves on the amount of time and energy that goes into teaching communication skills to students," he says.

Ethical aspects of medical practice, including the issue of consent, is "fundamental" to all aspects of training at Newcastle, he adds.

"I hope that something that will come out of this is that the practices that are being highlighted at Alder Hey do not reflect practices in the rest of the country."

But he is insistent that we should not lose sight of the importance of doing post-mortems on deceased patients and the vital role that legitimately-obtained human tissue and organs can play in medical research.

"Unfortunately, there is the potential here that people would not consent to post-mortems, even if it means that important genetic information is not obtained. I have real anxieties in this area, and working with families may also be adversely affected," he says.

"I think if this is handled properly by the media, the medical profession and the Government, some of these anxieties will be addressed."

Apart from the question of using human material for research purposes, Prof Burt says it is important for people to recognise the importance of post-mortems in establishing the cause of death.

"We need to continue to do autopsies for a number of reasons. For relatives' peace of mind, it is important as part of the bereavement process for families to know how their relative has died.

"Where genetic disease is involved, it may be that the death has implications for the rest of the family," says Prof Burt.

But crucially, there are a number of diseases where doctors would still be struggling at first base if they had been denied access to tissue from post-mortems.

"I think the best example is in the area of brain disease," says Prof Burt. "Several examples are worth noting, one is variant CJD disease, the human version of mad cow disease."

If scientists did not have access to human tissue after death then experts would not have recognised the similarities with the disease in animals, he says.

"Clinically, vCJD can look like other neurological diseases so we might not be able to say here is a specific disorder without an autopsy."

Recently, a team of research scientists in Newcastle discovered a previously unknown form of dementia.

"This was only possible because of studies involving tissue from post-mortems," Prof Burt adds.

While vCJD has so far affected only tiny numbers of people, the issue of dementia touches the lives of thousands.

"If the message that comes out after all these inquiries is that consent needs to be truly informed consent, then it may not be so damaging to research as we fear," he says.

The nature of medicine means that the post-mortem examination is still an important part of every medical student's education at Newcastle.

Prof Burt says: "All medical students at Newcastle are aware of what happens at an autopsy because that is also important to them in being able to seek informed consent.

"If they didn't see what goes on in an autopsy they would not be able to talk to relatives about it."

So far, the signals from the Health Secretary that he wants to see a more open, democratic relationship between doctors and their patients is something with which Prof Burt would wholeheartedly concur.

"The culture of the medical profession is changing, we have a different way of doing things now - and quite rightly so," he says.