Tissue retention - Hospital practice an outrage

Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Dublin has written to about 20 parents to inform them that the pituitary glands of their deceased children were passed on to a pharmaceutical company.

This was to facilitate the manufacture of growth hormones for children in need of such help. But many issues still remain to be addressed.

In the 1960s, a method of isolating the growth hormone in the pituitary gland at the base of the brain was discovered and international efforts were initiated to collect the hormone during autopsies, as this had the potential of helping children whose growth had been stunted as a result of a deficiency of that hormone.