Opposition To Autopsies

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31376, 23 May 1967, Page 17

Opposition To Autopsies

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) TEL AVIV, May 22. In a campaign against autopsies, religious vigilantes in Israel have been remoVing bodies from hospital mortuaries, circulating pictures of dissected bodies and threatening pathologists by mail and telephone, the “New York Times” news service reported. Public funerals have been arranged, by a group called the Committee for Safeguarding Human Dignity, for human organs said to have been sal-

vaged from mortuary refuse bins.

There have also been public prayers, fasts, demonstrations and violent outbursts. The campaigners want Israel’s laws governing autopsies to conform more closely to those in-the United States, where the consent of relar tives is required unless autopsies are ordered by coroners. A 1953 Israeli few permits post-mortem operations without the consent of the deceased or His family only when necessary to establish the cause of death of to use part of the body to treat another person. However, Israeli doctors have been interpreting the few more liberally, the news service said. Medical authorities have

held that the few in effect permitted autopsies in all cases since the cause of death cannot be definitely ascertained by clinical observation alone.

The opposition to postmortems is basically religious. It arises from laws that regard mutilation of the dead as a desecration. In some cases Jews who were gravely ill have jeopardised their chances of survival and refused to enter Israeli hospitals, to avoid any chance of an autopsy. The medical profession has begun to try to correct the impression, which the agitators have tried to foster, that doctors are vampires who pirate the organs of helpless victims for research of dubious scientific value.