NUKES - Bones removed from dead Brit. children for nuclear tests

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Bones quietly removed from dead British children for nuclear tests, agency says

By Chris Fontaine, Associated Press, 10/1/2001 01:37

LONDON (AP) Thousands of bones were removed from dead British children without their parents' consent during Cold War-era nuclear tests, the nation's Atomic Energy Authority said.

The femurs of about 4,000 young children were removed from 1954 to 1970, agency spokeswoman Beth Taylor said Sunday. The bones were used in tests to measure the effects atmospheric explosions of hydrogen bombs were having on humans and the environment.

''It is true that parental or relatives' approval wasn't sought,'' she said. ''We assume that parents weren't asked because it wasn't the norm at the time.''

Similar revelations were made in Australia in June. The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency said bones from dead Australian children were once shipped to the United States and Britain for testing.

Taylor stressed that the British research conducted in London and Glasgow, Scotland contributed to a decision to halt atmospheric nuclear explosions in 1963.

''The program was done for the best of reasons,'' she said. ''It was the period when we were doing atmospheric tests of hydrogen bombs, and there was quite a bit of concern about the dangers of nuclear fallout.''

The issue of parents' control over their children's bodies following death made headlines earlier this year in Britain when it was revealed that a Dutch pathologist working at a Liverpool, England, children's hospital had stripped children of their organs during post-mortem examinations between 1988 and 1995 without parental consent.

A spokeswoman for Scottish Parents for a Public Inquiry into Organ Retention said Sunday that stronger laws were needed to ensure that parents had the power to decide what happened to their childrens' remains.

Dr. Dick Van Velzen left Britain in 1995 to work at a hospital in Halifax, Canada, but was fired in 1998, and later hired by a Dutch hospital. He lost that job in February, after Canadian police issued a warrant for his arrest for storing human organs in Canada.

In June, he pleaded guilty in a Nova Scotia provincial court to charges he had illegally retained organs removed during autopsies of two children. He was sentenced to a year probation for committing an indignity to human remains. Van Velzen's work was not connected to Britain's nuclear research.

The British government said in a January report that the actions of Van Velzen were ''unethical and illegal'' and that ''the pain caused to the parents by this dreadful sequence of events is unforgivable.'' The doctor's license to practice medicine there has been suspended.

A related report said more than 100,000 hearts, brains, lungs and other organs were held by hospitals and medical schools across the country, many without the knowledge of next-of-kin.

The nuclear-related tests in Britain and Australia concentrated on strontium 90, a radioactive isotope that mimics the properties of calcium. The similarity allows bones and plants to absorb the isotope.

Researchers determined that atmospheric hydrogen bomb tests had been releasing potentially dangerous levels of strontium 90 into the atmosphere, spurring the British government's decision to halt such tests, Taylor said.

Hundreds of atmospheric weapons tests were conducted by nuclear powers in the 1950s and 60s. Later, tests were conducted underground.

-- Anonymous, October 01, 2001


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