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PROFESSIONAL NEWS
The Government is to introduce legislation, making informed autopsy consent a legal requirement, following the publication of a report into the Alder Hey organ scandal.
Health Secretary, Alan Milburn, made the announcement in the House of Commons, after having spent a weekend preparing colleagues and the public through well briefed media leaks, for what he described as `the most shocking report he had ever read'.
The report, published following an independent inquiry by Michael Redfern QC, told of the systematic dismemberment of children who died in the Liverpool hospital by pathologist Professor Dick Van Velzen, `on a scale and in a way that is horrific beyond anything anybody will have seen in this country'.
Mr Milburn said that the doctor had been reported to the General Medical Council and would `never be allowed to practice in this country again'.
According to the report, the archive of human tissue...