Hospital CEO Adendum

I, ____________________ bearing the relationship of ___________________ state
that I am the legal custodian of the body of the late _________________________________
and hereby authorize the representatives of the hospital to conduct a post mortem examination of the body of the said deceased and of its tissues. In accordance with the Human Tissues Gift Act. 1971. I hereby also give consent for the retention of such organs as are considered appropriate for medical education, scientific research and therapeutic purposes.

A Health Disciples Board decision provided me a number of documents and letters. The following letter clarifies what "retention of such organs as are considered appropriate for medical education, scientific research and therapeutic purposes" actually means. It seems to be relatively clear that it means incineration. Later, further clarification will show that incineration will take place with the hospital garbage.

College of Physicians &
Surgeons of Ontario
80 College St.
Toronto, Ontario
M5G 1E2

Following our recent telephone conversation I am writing to provide you with the protocol for the disposition of tissue obtained at autopsy which we follow at the hospital. The protocol is as follows:

1. Following the completion of the autopsy any tissue which is not retained for further gross and microscopic evaluation is returned to the body.

2. Retained organs are kept until the report of the post-mortem examination is complete (usually approximately 3 to 4 months). At this time those organs are incinerated.

3. Small representative tissue sections of each organ are kept for a period of one year. The tissue is subsequently incinerated.

4. Rarely, organs which demonstrate unusual or particularly striking pathology are kept on the long term within our department and are used for teaching purposes.

I hope that this information proves satisfactory. Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require further information.

Considering the passage of time since my wife's death, will the hospital reconsider and advise me of the location of her remains?

My wife died Sunday February 9, 1986. Because of the circumstances and lack of credible information I am not aware of the true time or cause of her death. Following her attempt to leave the ICU, after being declared dead and abandoned at 10:00 a.m., she was restrained and forcibly subjected to dubious pharmacologic treatment. Apparently, to ensure that she complied with the, newly repeated, medical advice that she was dead, she was subjected to a procedure euphemistically called an "autopsy". This was the procedure, I am led to believe, that all her internal organs, including her brains, were removed and subsequently incinerated.

In the spirit of human compassion would you, at least, provide me with enough information so that I might pay a symbolic visit to the general location of her incinerated remains?

The Hospital does not have an incinerator, and does not incinerate body parts. Normally, after an autopsy is done, the remains except for small microscopic samples, are returned to the body for release to the family.

Reference: My letter to you dated May 21, 1992
and hospital letter dated May 27, 1992.

As I was attempting to determine the location of my wife's remains, the information contained in the May 27 letter is of no value to me. While the Hospital's normal procedures are of general interest, I obviously wish to obtain specific information on the actual disposition of my wife's remains.

In August 1987, my GP advised me that he had discussed the "autopsy" and the disposition of Jean's remains with the pathologist who is also Vice President (Medical). He told me that he did not obtain any information relating to the discrepancies between the provisional and final autopsy diagnosis. He also said he was unable to determine the reason for the discrepancies between these reports and the hospital record. He advised me, that the best information that he could obtain from him, was that her organs were handled in the same manner as any organs or tissue removed from a patient during a surgical procedure. When pressed, he confirmed my worst suspicion, incineration.

The Health Disciplines Board, after referring to comments by the College of Physicians and Surgeons and the attached letter, made the following comment;

"As to the disposition of organs following autopsy, there was a hospital protocol in place regarding the disposing of organs. As to those of the members complained against who may have had any role in the disposing of those organs, there is no evidence to suggest they did not adhere to the hospital protocol and that was all, from a professional conduct point of view, that could be expected of them."

My GP's, the College's and the Board's comments, lead me to believe that my wife's remains did not receive the "normal" disposition referred to in the above letter of May 27. This belief is re-enforced by her not definitively stating that my wife received the "normal" treatment. There is not any reference, as to the disposition of my wife's remains, in the hospital records provided to me, by her, in January 1987. The protocol, outlined in the attached letter, certainly could not be practical unless a record of organ and tissue retention is maintained.

If my wife's body organs were returned to her body, following the procedure euphemistically referred to as an" autopsy", why was I led to believe that they were incinerated? Is this, a sadistic perverse game, routinely played by the hospital's senior medical staff?

Based on the circumstances, the above letter appears to be patronizing and incomplete. Considering the availability of commercial incinerators in Canada and the U.S.A., the possession of an incinerator has little bearing on whether or not the hospital disposes of human remains by incineration.

On the morning of June 25, 1993, the Regional Coroner after spending two hours at the hospital advised me that all her internal organs were reduced to a powder and probably blown away and dispersed by the wind after they were incinerated "with used surgical sponges and other medical waste".

He went on to elaborate that the brain was rarely returned to the body as it required a two week preparation before it was examined and as a result would have also been incinerated.

He did mention that the facility used for incineration was located on the outskirts of Gananoque.

In your previous correspondence with the hospital, you asked about the disposition of your late wife's internal organs following her autopsy. You were advised that they would have been returned to her body except for small tissue samples. My office recently reviewed this with the Head of the Pathology Department and confirmed that your wife's organs would have been returned to her body, except for some small amount of tissue.

You previously received a copy of the hospital protocol for the disposition of organs and tissues at autopsy. This protocol indicates that any tissue or organs which are not retained for further evaluation are returned to the body. It also states that organs or tissues not returned to the body are either kept or incinerated.

I have confirmed with the Head of Pathology that, while some of your late wife's tissue was retained, it is highly likely that some of it was incinerated. The company with whom the hospital contracted at the time for incineration of tissue was DeCom whose address is 25 Rue Valcourt in Gatineau, Quebec. I am advised that this would have been the site where any tissue from your late wife that had not been retained or returned to her body would have been incinerated.

The Registrar
Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario
2 Bloor Street East
Suite 1400
Toronto, Ontario
M4W 1A8

I am requesting your assistance to obtain hospital records that I have been unable to obtain. The Ministry of Health and Long Term Care has stated, clearly and unambiguously, that these records are in existence. Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario files; IPC file # A2004-00011/pmc and IPC file # pa040075-1 can provide some background information. A secondary desire is to determine if there was a misrepresentation of the facts by a representative of the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care.

My letter, of November 24, 2004 to the hospital resulted in a reply, dated December 16, 2004, that I found unacceptable because it ignored my request and provided dubious disturbing information. The hospital’s suggestion that my wife's organs were returned to her body, in accordance with the protocols of the time, is unsubstantiated with the records that the hospital has provided to me. The information that I have been provided, up to the MOH’s statement, was that none of her organs had been returned to her body, but had been incinerated. MOH’s clear statement gave me hope, for a short time, that a substantial portion of my concerns would be shown to now be unfounded.

I find it very distressingly uncomfortable to try and reconcile the hospital's information that an incinerator in Gatineau, Quebec might be involved and the Regional Coroner after conferring with the hospital, telling me that all her organs were incinerated at a facility on the outskirts of Gananoque. I wonder if this might be an attempt of “Black Humour” by an element of the hospital hierarchy to see if they can start me making a pilgrimage to various medical waste disposal facilities in Canada and possibly, even, the world. I have not received any assurances that established protocols, relevant to this matter, were followed but I have been provided reliable information that demonstrated clearly that other established protocols were not adhered to. My many previous requests, to the hospital, about the disposition of her remains provided no answers as well as my requests for the obviously missing hospital records. I presume that the hospital found my wife was insulting non compliant when she ignored her death diagnosis, by the attending physicians, and attempted to leave the ICU while she was left unattended after their pronouncement. Their resulting actions, as I know them, were revoltingly disgraceful. No serious attempt has been made to suggest that I have viewed or interpreted events incorrectly.

In January 1987 the hospital provided me with a packet that was attested to be a complete copy of my wife's hospital records. The College of Physicians and Surgeons (CPSO) also required a complete copy of the records in order to comply with the “Health Disciplines Act”. The packet that the hospital provided me contained records that were not provided to the CPSO and the packet that was provided to the CPSO contained records that were not provided to me. An obvious example of non compliance with the requirements of the law and an indication of the truthfulness in attesting to the completeness of my copy. I have attached a letter, to me, from the “Health Disciplines Board” counsel partially describing the discrepancy. The Board hearing that followed (not attached but available) caused the Board to declare its previous decision null and void and required the CPSO to reconsider my complaint. A previously unheard of decision.

The above letter didn't provide any clarification on MOH bureaucrat's statement, “I have been advised that there have been many investigations undertaken on your behalf since 1986 and that the evidence suggests that appropriate practices were followed. This matter has been reviewed and discussed with you over the past decade and there is nothing more to add.”. I wonder if it was at these discussions that I was assured that I had misinterpreted attempts to reassure me as threats. I wish I had some recollection of these discussions.

In general terms I believe that Canadian Common Law evolved from British Common Law and as a result there are many similarities and there are some areas that the laws are indistinguishable. This fall I was advised by a correspondent in Britain that doctors there have no duty to give, as a result of their negligence, a truthful account of the circumstances of a death, nor even to refrain from deliberately falsifying records. It seemed too farfetched to be believable until I looked at the European Court of Human Rights decision and found that this was in fact correct. The reference for the Courts decision is “DECISION AS TO THE ADMISSIBILITY OF Application no. 45305/99 by William and Anita POWELL against the United Kingdom”. This judgment astonished the British Medical Association. Maybe my attempts to obtain a just resolution of my concerns are futile and I have no rights if there is a disagreement with the medical profession. Are they in effect a law unto themselves with not even a requirement to tell the truth?

The Information and Privacy Commission has advised that you have questions about the disposition of your late wife's remains, in particular her brain. She has asked that I contact you about what I have been able to find out.

The Head of our Pathology Department has informed me that, in 1986, the practice and custom in teaching hospitals was to return the internal organs to the body following autopsy (except for small samples of tissue) and to retain the brain and conduct its examination after it has been fixed in formalin for at least a week. The reason for handling the brain in this fashion was to optimize its preservation prior to examination. Small samples vould then be encased in slides for microscopic analysis and these samples would be retained for the long term. Small samples would also be kept in formalin in case more extensive microscopic analysis was necessary and these fixed samples would subsequently be incinerated. It was not standard practice to maintain an inventory or record of what was returned to the body.

In the case of your wife, in keeping with the practice and custom at the time, her internal organs would have been returned to her body following autopsy (except for small tissue samples) and her brain would have been retained. Slides of brain tissue would have been made. The remainder of her brain would have been incinerated. Slides of your wife's tissue, including brain tissue are still in our Pathology Department.

As it has been made abundantly clear that the "Slides of your wife's tissue, including brain tissue are still in our Pathology Department." would be incinerated shortly as per the autopsy protocol (click here), as the date, February 1987 was rapidly aproaching (maybe, though, the protocol was not closely adhered to or maybe it was routinely ignored), I requested that a local Funeral Home attempt to retrieve these remains.

The retrieval was successful on the afternoon of July 14, 2005. Arrangements are being made for respectful internment.

I am still attempting to obtain pertinent, missing, hospital records with the hope that they will lead to the recovery of all, or many of, her organs or at the very least discover the location where they were discarded.