  
Hospital disputes UK organ doctor's defense
Last Updated: 2001-02-05 15:15:29 EST (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The hospital at the center of the British organ retention scandal says that claims by Dutch pathologist Dick van Velzen that hospital management was to blame are unsubstantiated.
Britons were outraged last month by a government report detailing how the pathologist, when working at Alder Hey hospital in the northern England city of Liverpool, systematically stripped organs and other body parts from 2,000 dead children without parental consent. He has been suspended from the medical register in Britain and is under police investigation.
Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, the pathologist said. "I have not taken organs without parents' permission, I've carried out post mortems either with parental consent or on behalf of the coroner." He blamed hospital management for not making it clear to parents what is involved in a post mortem.
But in a statement released Monday, the hospital made the following response: "Professor van Velzen has had an opportunity to give evidence to the Redfern inquiry and this has been taken into account. The claims he makes are not substantiated in the inquiry report."
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