Organ Tourism and Cadavers on Display Bill [HL]

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, made a very important point about our history in this country and how we have had to resolve these issues over many years. I very much welcome the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Ribeiro and Lord Moynihan, on that matter.

I start by congratulating my noble friend Lord Hunt on bringing this Private Member’s Bill before the House today and on all the work that he and other noble Lords have done. This issue has truly been a good example of the House of Lords working as one to solve what we think is a serious problem and a gap in the law. I am honoured to deal with this from the Front Bench on behalf of the Labour Party today.

I intend to speak mostly about the section of the Bill which addresses cadavers on display. My own personal view, which the people involved in this issue will know, is that exhibitions such as “Real Bodies” should be banned completely, as they are in France. Over 10 years ago, a French judge ruled to shut down a Paris exhibition of real human bodies from China, saying that exhibiting dead bodies for profit is a

“violation of the respect owed to them”.

I hate to repeat what I said in the House in 2019, when my noble friend Lord Hunt, brought an Oral Question, in February. But I said then that there was a

“much more fundamental ethical issue at play here. Leaving aside the need for cadavers and human tissue for scientific and medical training purposes”

and research, which I completely and utterly understand but which we regulate in this country through the Human Tissue Authority,

“it seems likely that all the exhibitions which use plasticised cadavers and foetuses for supposedly educational purposes could use modern materials and production to create the same exhibits. That begs the question: why use cadavers and human body parts at all? If the answer is that people want to see such things and will pay to do so, I remind noble Lords that people used to flock in their thousands to see public executions until 1868.”

There is an echo of what the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said about this issue. I went on to say

“Does the HTA exist to regulate what, in this case, is akin to ghoulish curiosity and its manifestations? What is the ethical position and who should be examining it?”—[Official Report, 27/2/19; cols. 228-9.]

Those were the questions that I asked in 2019.

A series of “Body Worlds” anatomical exhibitions has toured many countries worldwide, sometimes raising controversies about the sourcing and display of actual human corpses and body parts. Gunther von Hagens, the inventor and initiator, maintains that all human specimens were obtained with the full knowledge and consent of the donors before they died, but this has never been independently verified. In 2004, von Hagens returned seven corpses to China because they showed evidence of being executed prisoners. In 2002, two Russian doctors from the University of Novosibirsk were charged with illegally supplying von Hagens with 56 bodies, including convicts, homeless people and mentally ill people, without any consent from their relatives. Gunther von Hagens said that none of the body parts were used in the “Body Worlds” exhibitions, but I have to say that that raises doubts and scepticism, unsurprisingly.

Consent is not regulated worldwide according to the same ethical standards, which indeed raises concerns. Paperwork is separated from the bodies, which can be used for displays or sold in pieces to medical schools. No one will know for sure, because each plastinated corpse is made anonymous to protect its privacy. Hans-Martin Sass, a philosophy professor with a speciality in ethics, was hired by the California Science Center to investigate “Body Worlds” before the show’s US debut in 2004. He matched 200 donation forms to death certificates, but he could not match the paperwork to specific bodies that von Hagens has on display.

There is a gap in the law in the world, but there is also a gap in the law for the Human Tissue Authority. Like many noble Lords, I welcome the fact that the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, said that the Government would look to strengthen the HTA, which does not have the powers to deal with imported human material. We have to address this—and from these Benches we support this Bill wholeheartedly and hope the Government will do the same and that we will see it rapidly on the statute book.