| The Nasty Side of Organ Transplanting Second Edition Norm Barber Copyright Chapter 19 Trusting Your Hospital If you use Frankenstein medicine you get Frankenstein results. Professor Lynette Dumble77 In 1958 an American, Dr Raben, discovered he could obtain human growth hormone (hGH) from pituitary glands removed from corpses. The pituitary gland is pea shaped and located in a bone cavity at the base of the brain. Very short children grew to normal height and infertile women became pregnant by eating the corpses� growth hormone. In Australia, when professionals are caught acting despicably, they blame their behaviour on influences from the United States. Yet during the history of the Human Growth Hormone program American doctors told patients hGH was obtained from corpses. Australian doctors deceptively said the Hormone was from a "natural source", but not that it came from dead bodies, which wouldn�t have sounded too natural. The Australian Human Pituitary Hormone Program began in 1965. The Commonwealth Serum Laboratory (CSL) managed the operation collecting the glands from morgues throughout Australia and processing them into hGH. The pituitary glands were frequently removed illegally and without next of kin consent so CSL collectors avoided telling hospitals of their activities, instead approaching the pathologists doing non-coronial post-mortems. These post-mortems were theoretically done only for education and research purposes. Autopsy consent forms didn�t always include the right to remove organs but some pathologist did so anyway. The Australian practice of using hospital post-mortems as a deceptive means to remove body parts was also practised in Britain and many other countries. Relatives were approached for consent for a post-mortem in the interest of science but the real reason was to harvest organs and body parts. Even today some post-mortem consent forms have an organ donation clause slipped inside the text. Body parts may be removed regardless. The Commonwealth Serum Laboratory still couldn�t obtain adequate supplies of glands in Australia because pathologists in the program knew that removing glands for hormone transplant purposes could be a legal and public relations nightmare and were reluctant to become involved. In response, the Commonwealth Serum Laboratory (CSL) bi-passed the pathologists and bribed morgue attendants to remove the glands. These morgue attendants, untrained in surgery, used a hammer and chisel to whack off the bone cavity holding the pituitary gland then put the jagged bone, gland and dangling veins into acetone fluid or directly into the freezer from where CSL collectors would sporadically pick them up.78 One CSL employee noted, "We found, in the beginning, that supplies were sporadic, until we hit upon the simple expedient of bribing the post-mortem room attendants�"79 Morgue attendants, including those at the Queen Elizabeth 2 Centre in Perth often used the bribery money for Christmas Parties. One attendant noted, "�we�d use it mostly for our Christmas party. We used to have a pretty good morgue Christmas party."80 Being paid made such a difference that one pathologist in Queensland noted, "The attendants were pretty well drilled and they would remove the pituitaries and in fact if you wanted a pituitary for diagnostic purposes you had to stop them before they removed it. They automatically took them.� 81 Another pathologist notes, "We would grizzle every now and again because we thought we might have wanted the pituitary and it�d be gone you see,�" 82 Professor Margaret Allars, who headed the �Inquiry into the use of Pituitary Derived Hormones in Australia and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease�, concluded that it appeared that gland removal was illegal when collection was used for hormone transplant purposes. A post-mortem, even with consent of relatives, was not a consent to removal organs. No one was ever charged.83 One morgue attendant described the attitude at the time thus, "Permission to do the post-mortem would cover it because how many people know you�re got a pituitary in your body."84 Between 1965 and 1985 the program removed glands from 171,091 Australian corpses. It stopped in 1985 when American scientists warned the Australian Government that Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) prions were being transmitted via hGH derived from infected pituitary glands. The fact that corpses were being robbed under the guise of post-mortems was not a factor in stopping the program. Dr McGovern�s Disease Warnings Ignored From 1969 Dr McGovern, a leading Australian neuro-pathologist and member of the Human Pituitary Advisory Committee, advised the Commonwealth Serum Laboratory (CSL) that glands should not be taken from corpses where death was caused by �slow viral infections� that would have included Creutzfeldt-Jakob and Alzheimer�s disease. In 1976 he was removed from the advisory committee and in 1977 the Commonwealth Serum Laboratory "accidentally" removed his infection warnings on gland harvesting and collectors recommenced removing glands where prions were a possible cause of death.85 The Callous Treatment of Jane Allendar The callousness of medical professionals could hardly be more distastefully displayed than with the 1988 death of Adelaide Hills woman, Jane Allendar. Jane became infected with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease after receiving fertility treatment at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Adelaide from 1975. The Human Growth Hormone (hGH) used was derived from human corpses, in Jane�s case, corpses of some who had died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob or similar prion diseases. These were just the type of corpses that Dr McGovern had tried to exclude from the harvest process. It wasn�t just the fact that Jane Allendar had died due to medical negligence but the nasty way she was treated during her lengthy dying process. Doctors and medical bureaucrats associated with the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the South Australian health system knew for some time how Jane had been infected and that she would die a slow, horrible death. But to protect their own interests they didn�t bother to tell Jane or Ted Allendar despite the Allendar�s persistent efforts to discover the cause. Eventually, near the end of her life, they sent a nurse to coldly inform Jane she had a terminal illness, cause unknown. But these medical bureaucrats knew all along. Following her death Ted Allendar spent four years searching for the cause of his wife�s death. By this time probably twenty doctors and medical bureaucrats knew what killed Jane but all feigned ignorance or just didn�t think it was important to tell Ted. It was only in passing, at an Administrative Appeals Tribunal Hearing in Adelaide, that Ted learned that Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease prions had killed Jane and had come from the fertility treatment derived from corpse glands - and that the doctors and bureaucrats had known for years even before her death.86,87 |