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.
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.
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 that parents were not asked for their consent.
A report in the Sunday Herald newspaper said that more than half the children who had femur samples removed were still-born, and that most others died before they reached the age of five.
Every year, between 100 and 200 thigh bones of children who died in west central Scotland were removed or sampled at post mortem examinations at Yorkhill.
A handful came from Perthshire, Orkney, and Ross and Cromarty and Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands.
After being incinerated, the femurs were analysed for the radioactive isotope strontium90, 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 children's bones.
The only permission ever requested from the bereaved parents in the 12 years of analysing bones was for routine post mortem examinations, the newspaper reported.
Health minister Susan Deacon said last night the findings were very disturbing and merited further investigation.
She will ask the independent review group set up after the Alder Hey scandal in Liverpool to look at the findings.
"While these events took place some time ago, they will still be very disturbing to the families concerned," she said.
"I have made it clear that the paternalism of the past has no place in a 21st-century health service and parents must be kept involved in any decision affecting their children."
She believed the findings would strengthen the review group's determination to make sure such things never happened again.