Organs stripped from dead nuclear workers

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Organs and bones were illegally harvested from the bodies of dead nuclear industry workers at Sellafield for radiation research without their consent over a period of 30 years, an inquiry found yesterday.

The relatives of 64 staff - many only discovered loved ones had been stripped of livers, tongues and even legs decades after they were buried - said the findings proved the existence of an "old boys' club" among pathologists, coroners and scientists around Sellafield before 1992 which prioritised the needs of the nuclear industry above those of families.

In evidence to inquiry chairman Michael Redfern, QC, who oversaw the Alder Hey inquiry, representatives of the workers said they felt as if bodies had been "mutilated" and treated as "commodities" to assist in research on behalf of the industry to disprove the link between cancers and radiation.

Some missing bones had been replaced with broomsticks for funerals. Redfern said the families had been "wronged". "In most cases considered by the inquiry, relatives were let down at the time when they were most vulnerable by those in whom they were entitled to place an absolute trust," he said.

In the Commons, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne apologised to the families and said the practice had been stopped.

The 650-page report, following a three-year inquiry which also examined three other studies involving the industry in which 6500 bodies, including children, were used, said the removal of organs and tissue was "unnecessary and inappropriate" in most of the Sellafield cases.

Pathologists who gave evidence to the inquiry were described as being "profoundly ignorant of the law" and of erroneously believing they could act with "carte blanche to remove tissue and organs for whatever purpose they saw fit". Coroners were also accused of assisting the nuclear authorities heedless of whether consent had been obtained or if the removal of organs had relevance to the cause of death.

The inquiry was ordered by then Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling in 2007 when it first emerged that body parts had been removed between 1961 and 1992. The deaths of 76 workers - 64 from Sellafield and 12 from other British nuclear plants - were examined.

The "driving force" behind the post-mortem extraction of organs at Sellafield was BNFL's chief medical officer Dr Geoffrey Schofield, an acclaimed occupational health expert. The inquiry found he was subject to "little if any managerial supervision or control of his activities" before his death in 1985.

The report said Schofield took "somewhat dubious steps to obtain organs" in cases that were of particular interest to him.

EARLY DEATH

Dr Stan Higgins's father, also called Stan, was only 49 when he died.

He had been exposed to ruthenium during the 1973 head-end incident.

"He was the most irradiated man that ever lived," his son said yesterday. "He survived for about five years but he lost his thyroid and started having blackouts and died of a heart attack."

Dr Higgins knew some of his father's tissue had been taken three years after he died, but he only discovered the true extent of the theft - vertebrae, mediastinum, kidney, liver, heart, spleen, sternum, both lungs and lymph nodes - three years ago.

- INDEPENDENT