The Jerusalem Post, Internet News Article, December 28th, 2000:
Foreign experts to inspect country's sole forensic institute
By Judy Siegel
JERUSALEM (December 28) - The Health Ministry will invite
foreign teams of expert forensic pathologists to examine the workings
of the L. Greenberg Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir in
south Tel Aviv, the country's sole institution for the performance of
autopsies in cases of unnatural death.
Ministry associate director-general Dr. Yitzhak Berlovich revealed
this yesterday to The Jerusalem Post after the Hebrew-language daily
Yediot Aharonot printed a "teaser" on its investigation of the
institute to be published tomorrow.
Reporter Ronen Bergman maintains that the institute, headed for the
last 13 years by chief pathologist Prof. Yehuda Hiss, is involved in
"organ sales" involving body parts - legs, thighs, ovaries, breasts
and testicles - removed from corpses and transferred to the
institutes and for "practice" by medical school students.
He claimed that the organs removed from the bodies were not returned
but replaced by "broomsticks, cotton wool, garden hoses" and other
objects to fill out the bodies after autopsy. Hiss, the reporter
wrote, filed reports that he was attending autopsies at the exact
times that he claimed to have appeared in court.
Bergman also charged that the institute has carried out extensive
renovations on staff quarters and the cafeteria, but that the autopsy
rooms are in a rundown conditions "with flies in the air and poorly
operating refrigerators."
Hiss said in an Israel Radio interview yesterday that only "specimens
of tissue" were taken from corpses when outside experts were needed
for an opinion, and not whole organs. However, when families of the
deceased agree to donate bones and other organs not "harvested" in
the hospital where he died, "filling materials" are used to make the
body "esthetic" before burial, Hiss said. He also said that court
hearings listed in the registry were sometimes postponed, and that he
viewed corpses before and after autopsies performed by underlings,
and did not have to be present throughout.
Berlovich said that he learned two years ago that the institute at
Abu Kabir was removing organs from corpses and sending them to
research institutes and medical schools, taking a "fee" for the
service that was then transferred to the ministry.
"When I found out, I immediately gave an order that this be stopped.
To the best of my knowledge, this practice has not continued," but
Berlovich conceded that it was "difficult to supervise the institute,
as it is the only one in the country to conduct autopsies; if we
wanted to send local forensic medicine specialists to observe Abu
Kabir, we couldn't, because all the experts in the country are
there." If any organs are in fact being removed from an unidentified
person without the family's written permission, this is a criminal
violation." Because of the limited number of people who donated their
bodies to science for doctors and medical students to practice on,
the Health and Justice ministries have just agreed on new regulations
that would allow controlled removal of organs for such a purpose, he
disclosed.
The ministry may consider opening another forensic medicine institute
in the North or South to institute some kind of competition,
Berlovich said, but it already decided a few days ago to hire foreign
experts to study the situation at Abu Kabir and make
recommendations.
"It was not because of the Yediot article," he maintained, "but
because every few months there are stories in the papers about things
they claim are going on there." The associate director-general said
the ministry has "complete confidence" in Hiss and "no intention of
replacing him."
"The institute was neglected for many years due to minimal state
budgets, and when we recently received a closing order from the Labor
Ministry due to substandard conditions, we pressed the Internal
Security Ministry - whose Israel Police is the main client for
autopsy results - for funding. That ministry will finance half of the
NIS 8 million now available, and the renovations should be completed
in a year or two," Berlovich said.
As for renovations of institute offices, Berlovich said that since
only a small amount of funds had been provided each year, it was
invested in building showers and renovating pathologists' and his own
offices, as well as the staff cafeteria, because nearly NIS 10
million were needed to rebuild the autopsy facilities.
