Madam, – It would be helpful to understand precisely what the HSE hopes to achieve by inviting families to retrieve organs from the Rotunda Hospital for burial. Where this has happened previously the result for those affected was a mix of sadness, a renewed sense of bereavement and real or, in some cases, wildly exaggerated grief. For everyone else the net effect was to curb the enthusiasm of those who would otherwise be prepared to sign on to the organ donor register for fear of later misuse of their donated organs by the medical profession.
Although the HSE has also criticised the Rotunda for cremating body parts without notification or apparent permission, in reality this would have been a better course of action to take rather than invite the inevitable spectacle of wailing relatives ceremoniously interring a small box containing some insignificant body part which nobody could argue ever had a life of its own.
– Yours, etc,
PETER COGHLAN, Broadstone, Dorset, England.