British news story, June 17th, 2001.
Thousands of dead babies had their thigh bones secretly removed from their bodies during the 1960s in Scotland as part of a scientific study into the dangers of radiation from nuclear weapons tests, it was reported tonight.
Leading medical researchers at Yorkhill Sick Children's Hospital in Glasgow reduced femur samples from more than 2,100 children between 1959 and 1970 to ashes so they could be analysed for radioactive contamination.
Every year, between 100 and 200 thigh bones of children who died in west central Scotland were removed or sampled at post mortem examination at Yorkhill.
A handful came from Perthshire, Orkney, and Ross and Cromarty and Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands.
Operators of the Dounreay nuclear plant in Caithness, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, which initiated the research, and the Medical Research Council, which oversaw it, have admitted parents were not asked for their consent.
The report in the Sunday Herald newspaper says that more than half the children who had femur samples removed were still-born and most others died before they reached the age of five.
After being incinerated, the femurs were analysed for the radioactive isotope strontium-90, which was being spread around the world by atmospheric nuclear tests.
Doctors feared that because it was contaminating milk, it could be building up to dangerous levels in childrens' bones.
The only permission ever requested from the bereaved parents in the 12 years of analysing bones was for routine post-mortem examinations.
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