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25 Teves 5762 - January 9, 2002 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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NEWS
Rabbi Gafni Calls for Pathologist's Suspension in body parts Scandal
by Yated Ne'eman Staff

UTJ MK Rabbi Moshe Gafni called for the immeidate firing or suspension of Professor Yehuda Hiss, head of the L. Greenberg Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir, over the retention of parts from autopsied soldiers' bodies. On Monday it was revealed that a soldier's skull was on display in a glass case, and most of his body was held in the Institute, in violation of the law and of basic principles of human decency. The family of the soldier was not aware of the situation and had not approved it.

But MK Anat Maor, chairman of the Knesset Science and Technology Committee, also called on Health Minister Nissim Dahan to suspend Hiss immediately.

The ministry, which owns and supervises the institute, had last week identified body tissue illegally stored there as belonging to four soldiers whose bodies had been autopsied. The soldiers' families had been informed by the Israel Defense Forces that the parts, including skull fragments, had been identified as belonging to their dear ones.

The story about the body tissues began last year, when Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein ordered a criminal investigation into alleged misdeeds over several years at the Abu Kabir institute. Health Minister Nissim Dahan had asked Rubinstein to state his position on findings released the previous April by a ministry investigating committee.

Health Ministry Associate Director-General Yitzhak Berlovich, who was put in direct control of the institute last spring, suspended all of its research activities and obtained funds to renovate the 70-year-old building, whose autopsy rooms and refrigeration facilities were reportedly in terrible condition.

A newspaper report published a year ago claimed that Abu Kabir had been involved in "selling" body parts removed from corpses without permission from their families to medical research institutes for use by medical students. They wrote that the organs were not returned, but replaced by "broomsticks, cotton wool, garden hoses," and other objects to fill out the bodies after autopsy. Removal of organs without the family's written permission is a crime.

Attorney Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, who has already accused Hiss twice of violating corpses in cases she represented, also called on Rubinstein to suspend Hiss following the new charges. In 1998, Darshan-Leitner sued the institute on behalf of the family of Alisdair Sinclair, a Scotsman who died under mysterious circumstances in the Ben-Gurion Airport lockup.

Sinclair's parents discovered that their son's heart and other organs were missing. The institute later sent the parents a heart and other missing organs, but the family is still not certain they belonged to their son, said Darshan- Leitner.

In another case, Darshan-Leitner petitioned the High Court of Justice on behalf of the family of Ze'ev Buzaglo, after they learned that doctors had practiced on his body in Abu Kabir. Darshan-Leitner has demanded that Hiss be put on trial for the affair.

The IDF claimed yesterday that the soldiers' body parts were kept without its knowledge or approval. They said that no one at Abu Kabir had notified the army they were keeping body parts of soldiers who had been killed in training accidents.

 

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