Some 200 Orthodox pickets demonstrated today in front of Hadassah organization headquarters in Manhattan to protest against autopsies in the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.
Mrs. Mortimer Jacobson, Hadassah president, declared in a statement issued during the picketing that the Hadassah Hospital was the only one in Israel “that has concluded agreements with the rabbinate on this matter.” She added that one of the “vicious falsehoods” disseminated by the pickets was that autopsies were performed on 80 percent of deceased patients at Hadassah Hospital and that the figure was in fact “only 33 percent” which she said was “below the minimum for institutions of this kind.”
She also said the hospital did not perform autopsies “against the expressed objections” of the patient’s family “or the patient himself,” except where postmortems are required by law, as in homicide cases.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
