Elberte v. Latvia: a curious case of tissue, relatives and the ‘right to private life’

By Edward S. Dove

A European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’) decision rendered on 13 January 2015 (Case of Elberte v. Latvia) has raised an interesting question regarding the nature and scope of the right for relatives to oppose the removal of their deceased loved one’s tissues, including for transplantation purposes.

In this case, a Latvian man died in an automobile accident in 2001. The following day, his body was transported to a forensic centre, where an autopsy was carried out. The Latvian Government alleged that after the autopsy, the forensic medical expert verified, as required by the law at that time, that there was no stamp in the deceased’s passport denoting his objecting to the use of his body tissue. Nor were any objections to the removal by the deceased’s relatives communicated to the examiner. Consequently, a small portion of his body tissue was removed, purportedly, the Latvian Government claimed, for transplantation purposes. A few days later, a relative retrieved the body and the next day, the funeral took place. This was the first time the deceased’s wife, Ms Elberte, saw her husband since his death. She noticed that her husband’s legs were tied together; he was buried this way.

Student Blog - Presumed Consent to Organ Donation in Wales: A Brief Commentary

By Scott Clair
3rd Year Undergraduate LLB Student, University of Edinburgh

The decision of the Welsh Assembly to introduce a new ‘opt-out’ system for organ donation is one which raises interesting ethical questions. On the one hand, there are those who strongly endorse such an approach on utilitarian grounds as one which will lead to a substantial increase in the amount of organs for transplantation – indeed the Welsh government have already hypothesised that the introduction of such legislation will lead to an increase in donors of about 25 per cent. Conversely, one may question the ethics of such a ‘presumed consent’ model, which raises the wider ethical question of whether consent can ever be said to be true in any meaningful sense where it has been presumptively pre-ordained by policy.