A chara, - I found the article from Prof Brendan Drumm of Crumlin Hospital about post mortem and the retention of children's organs (The Irish Times, February 10th) almost entirely self-serving. He appears to think that, until the public became aware through the Bristol inquiry of the practice of retaining body parts of children without recourse to their parents, that it was somehow ethical. Was it not possible for medical people to use their common sense on the practice of selling body parts to pharmaceutical companies without recourse to the next of kin?
He writes of the "harrowing experience for any professional asking bereaved parents for permission to carry out a post-mortem immediately after the death of a child" and adds that "doctors in hospitals round the world did not seek parental permission to retain body parts least that add significantly to the distress of relatives."
Least Prof Drumm or any other health professional think they appreciate how the death of a baby affects parents, may I say that I am now compelled to write to the Rotunda Hospital seeking information on how our firstborn baby was treated after her post-mortem there in July 1970? - Yours, etc., Anthony Jordan
Gilford Road, Dublin 4.