Glands scandal - Hospitals must make full disclosure

Since Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children came clean last week with details of the pituitary glands that were taken from 20 deceased children, there has been a flood of information about the practice, which also involved the farming of other glands.

The Southern Health Board announced that 111 glands were supplied to a pharmaceutical firm by Cork University Hospital and Tralee General Hospital.

Limerick Regional Hospital and Galway University Hospital also admitted supplying pituitary glands. James Connolly Memorial, Dublin, announced yesterday that it was involved too.

Yet when members of the Parents for Justice Group submitted requests under the Freedom of Information Act, they were fobbed off. It was mainly to supply such information that this legislation was designed.

Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical firm, confirmed it was supplied with 7,500 pituitary glands by 32 Irish hospitals, but so far only about 20 hospitals have come forward. Some were paid per gland, but the Southern Health Board stated that neither of the hospitals in Cork and Tralee received remuneration, nor did they maintain any records of transactions.

Leaving aside the ethical implications of this latest scandal, the lack of a paper trail is either another failure on the part of the impossibly expensive hospital administrations or, more disturbingly, an attempt to disguise a dubious practice.

Only full and honest disclosure on the part of the hospitals can go some way to making amends this latest tawdry episode in the Health Service.