April 22, 2009
Source: The Independent
Bereaved families will be allowed to pay for pathologists to perform body scans on their loved ones to establish cause of death if they object to post-mortems for religious reasons, the Government announced yesterday.
Jewish and Muslim groups have been pressing for a change in the law which would replace surgical post-mortems with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. Both Islam and Judaism emphasise the sanctity of the body after death. Both religions request that a body should be prepared by the family, washed and buried as soon as possible.