Madam, - As a parent of one of the children who had their organs removed and retained during post mortem I feel I have to write to express my views on the subject.
My little girl was almost six years old when she died. She was a cardiac patient in Our Lady's Hospital, Crumlin. She had two cardiac operations during her short life and it was Mr Maurice Neligan who performed them. I want to thank him from the bottom of my heart for treating my daughter and allowing myself, her dad and her sisters to have the pleasure of this little girl for almost six years. I have no doubt that without Mr Neligan's skill and expertise and also that of the cardiologist and other medical staff in the hospital, my little girl would have died much sooner.
However, when I discovered that her organs had been removed and retained without our knowledge or consent, I was devastated. My beautiful little girl, who had struggled to live, who attended the hospital all her life, who was permanently on medication to keep her alive and and who always did what her doctors said and never complained, despite spending long periods in the hospital, was violated in this most awful way. Her organs were removed and after lengthy correspondence with the hospital we were eventually told that maybe all her organs were retained - not just her heart and lungs, as we were initially told.
I understand the need for post-mortems and research. I am a reasonable person. I know my daughter lived so long because of the knowledge gained from previous post-mortems and I am thankful for that. But why oh why didn't Mr Neligan or one of his team tell me what would happen during post mortem? Why didn't they just ask permission? I would have let them use my precious little girl's organs if it were to help even one more child in the future.
But I wasn't told; none of the parents were told. It was done behind our backs. Mr Neligan writes in his column in your Health Supplement (January 24th)that organ retention was carried out everywhere. Did it never occur to either him or his colleagues to question where all the organs had come from or if parents/family members knew that parts of their loved ones ended up in teaching institutions, research centres or pharmaceutical companies? I think not.
Mr Neligan ends his column by saying "It's been a bad time to be a doctor". Well, it has been a bad time to be a parent too if your child is involved in the organ retention scandal in Ireland. And the fact is that we, the parents of these beautiful children, will never be free of the pain and distress caused because the medical profession did not respect us enough to tell us the truth. The lack of communication referred to in the Madden Report is a joke; communication was completely non-existent. But the fact is no report or legislation will ever ease the grief caused by this national scandal.
We, the parents involved, must live with this awful knowledge for the rest of our lives. You see, Mr Neligan, it is going to be a bad time to be parents for all of us, for ever more. - Yours, etc,
CHARLOTTE YEATES, Rushbrook Grove, Templeogue, Dublin 6W.