Israel admits unauthorized organ harvests

JERUSALEM, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- Israel secretly harvested organs from dead bodies without family consent in the 1990's, a senior Israeli scientist admitted.

The former head of Israel's Abu Kabir forensic institute, Dr. Yehuda Hiss, made the revelation in an interview originally conducted by American researcher Nancy Scheper-Hughes in 2000, ABC News reported Monday.

"We started to harvest corneas ... . Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family," Hiss said.

Relatives were not consulted, Hiss said, when pathologists also took heart valves, bones and skin from Israeli soldiers and civilians and Palestinians, ABC said. Although confirming the practice took place, authorities within the Israeli military said, "This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer."

Scheper-Hughes, professor of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, released her interview because Sweden's Aftonbladet newspaper printed Palestinian accusations "that young men have been seized, and made to serve as organ reserve."

"The symbolism, you know, of taking skin of the population considered to be the enemy is something just in terms of its symbolic weight, that has to be reconsidered," Scheper-Hughes said.

The story caused diplomatic tension with Israel, which accused the Swedish paper of anti-Semitism. Israel demanded a condemnation of the article, which the Swedes refused, and a planned official visit to Israel by the Swedish foreign minister was canceled.