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Exploiting dead children?
Children’s organs believed stored, sold
Officials in Britain are investigating revelations that a hospital that secretly removed organs from dead children is also storing the remains of up to 400 aborted unborn children.
Last year, public outrage greeted news that Liverpool’s Alder Hey Children’s Hospital had removed and stored organs from more than 800 dead children between 1988 and 1995 without the knowledge or consent of parents. During a government-ordered inquiry, investigators also found the stored bodies of aborted children. A hospital spokesman said the fetal remains had been sent to Alder Hey by local maternity hospitals between 1989 and 1995 and were currently being stored whole in laboratory “pots.” “They were sent for post mortem by the hospital. The question is what happened after that and why they were kept,” he said.
The spokesman said it was unclear whether the women involved had given their consent for the removal of the fetal remains. The hospital was considering whether to try to trace the women. “We have in many cases a name but that does not mean we know where the family is,” the spokesman said.
Experiments on the elderly
Catholic priest blows the whistle
Police are investigating claims that elderly people were used as guinea pigs for germ warfare experiments more than 30 years ago, since receiving written allegations from a Catholic priest.
Detectives have been handed three letters alleging that scientists at the Porton Down military base in Wiltshire used people suffering from dementia as research subjects between 1968 and 1970. The Ministry of Defence has denied the allegations, which follow reports that up to 20,000 soldiers were duped into taking part in experiments with nerve gas, mustard gas, and LSD at Porton Down. The latest claims are made in documents given by the Express newspaper to Wiltshire Police working on Operation Antler—the investigation into experimentation on servicemen. Two of the three letters are written by Msgr. John Barry, who described his belief that the experiments were taking place. The third was written by the then-assistant of the former Liberal Party leader, Sir David Steel.
Msgr. Barry first raised the charges in January 1970 when he told the Edinburgh Business Club: “I have seen evidence which I think is genuine, which seems to suggest that there is a certain section of the Ministry of Defence which uses elderly people as guinea pigs for experiments and quietly puts them to death afterwards. It is carefully hidden by the Official Secrets Act.”
The issue received little publicity at the time, but has resurfaced following the allegations about the testing of soldiers. A police spokesman told the BBC, “We have been handed three letters in connection with the Porton Down investigation. We will be looking at those letters.”
Lower age of consent
Measure forced through Lords
A new law allowing the age of consent for homosexuals in Britain to be reduced from 18 to 16 was forced through Parliament on the last day of November.
The House of Commons Speaker Michael Martin had announced earlier that the government would use special powers contained in the Parliament Act to push the measure through Parliament. It is only the fourth time since World War I that the Parliament Act has been used.
Earlier in November the House of Lords had refused, for the third time, to approve the measure. Under ordinary circumstances the 205-144 vote would have stymied efforts to pass the legislation. But proponents of the legislation demanded that the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair should use its power under the Parliament Act to overcome the opposition in Lords. Peter Tatchell, of the gay lobbying group entitled OutRage, explained: “The unelected House of Lords has no democratic mandate to block the wishes of the vast majority of MPs who have voted three times in favor of equality.”
In fact, government sources had made it clear that the government was prepared to use the Parliament Act. A Home Office spokesman told reporters, “The government has always made clear that it would invoke the Parliament Act at the appropriate stage, if necessary, to ensure that the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Bill becomes law.”
Baroness Young, who had led the opposition in the House of Lords, described the government’s decision as “a constitutional outrage.” She said the drive to enact the legislation “is a classic example of bypassing parliament.” The baroness added: “This is a piece of legislation driven by metropolitan, London attitudes and is completely out of step with the rest of the country.”
Angela Mason of the gay-rights group, Stonewall, thought otherwise. She told the Guardian, “When the history books come to be written, I believe it will be seen as the moment when this country finally began to change, when lesbians and gay men started to take our place as equal members of society.”
Back to Catholic World Report January 2001 Table of Contents