One of London’s largest hospitals stored organs, including children’s body parts, for up to two decades without informing grieving families.
The parts were taken from bodies and stored for tests by the forensic medicine department at King’s College, London, as far back as 1992 on behalf of the police or coroners.
But when that department shut in 2000 they were handed to Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital for storage. The findings came to light after a separate audit that showed police stored almost 500 body parts and organs. It has also emerged that the hospital kept one deceased woman’s brain without telling her son.
Linda Doroba, 45, died of a brain haemorrhage in 1996 but it wasn’t until last week that her son Darren Johnson laid the organ to rest. Mr Johnson, 43, of Slough, said: “The hospital has robbed the dead of dignity.”
