Organ retention without consent

REGARDING organ retention, the medical technicians were too shy to appear on Brenda Power’s show, RTÉ Radio 1, August 28. Though obviously clinically detached in their professional work, they were reluctant to have their own actions and motives dissected in a similar fashion.

So, how would pathologists feel if parents of bereaved children helped themselves to the contents of their wallets in the fond hope that the money might prove useful at a later date?

Or are they more attached to their own back pockets than to any feeling for the families or procedural niceties like consent or profound respect?

Even in death, we are not just slabs of meat at the mercy of licensed butchers or medical technicians.

Dissecting doctors and investigating police should be made publicly accountable and the dignity of the human body given precedence over pathological procedures concerning non-contamination of the crime scene, medical control or law enforcement.

After all, one indignity should not be a green light to commit another by way of invasive procedure.

So please, let the technicians however professional get their grubby hands off our bodies in life and in death without explicit informed consent and some sense of decency.

Richard Dowling,

Coote Street,

Mountrath,

Laois.