Dick van Velzen and the Burnside warehouse organ scandal in Nova Scotia, Canada

Abstract

AbstractDick van Velzen practiced as a pediatric pathologist at Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool, England from September 1988 until December 1995; he then relocated to the IWK‐Grace Health Centre, a children's and maternity hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where he practiced until he was fired for cause in January 1998. About a year and a half later, his practice in Liverpool came under increasing scrutiny, with the initial focus on the massive collection of post‐mortem pediatric organs he had accumulated for planned future research on sudden infant death syndrome. Soon, a Parliamentary Inquiry began investigating the full scope of his Liverpool practice. During the Inquiry, another organ‐hoarding scandal erupted; van Velzen, when leaving Halifax after his dismissal, had put his family's personal belongings into a storage facility at Burnside Industrial Park and then did not pay bills. As his belongings were being prepared for auction, formalin‐fixed organs were found, and a Canada‐wide arrest warrant for disrespect for human remains was issued by the Halifax Police. While the Alder Hey scandal resulted in a 535‐page‐long Parliamentary Report and the Human Tissue Act, van Velzen was never charged criminally in the UK. The largely unknown story of his second organ scandal in Halifax, is related here. Although he had obtained the body parts with the consent of the parents of the child to which they had belonged, his failure to properly identify and store them traumatized parents already impacted by his organ‐hoarding in the UK, traumatized additional parents in Halifax, and resulted in significant waste of public resources in investigating the case. He pled guilty to “indignity to a human body” in Canada and was fined and placed on 12 months' probation.