An interesting contrast with the UK, where if a death was reported to the Coroner (or Procurator Fiscal in Scotland), and an autopsy was deemed necessary, the relatives would have virtually NO choice in the matter. Normally the only situation here in which the relatives could choose not to give consent would be where the doctors had issued a death certificate, with a natural cause of death, and requested an autopsy for interest (a small proportion of all autopsies). About a quarter of deaths in the UK have a Coroner (or Procurator Fiscal) autopsy. Most of those are natural causes (but were sudden, unexplained, and therefore incapable of having a death certificate without an autopsy). Dr. Harold Shipman got away with it for so long because he wrote cases up as "natural causes".Originally Posted by Win2WinRSS
