October 1, 2001 By ALAN COWELL LONDON, Sept. 30 - In a remarkable evocation of the secretive ways and hidden priorities of the cold war, Britain's Atomic Energy Agency acknowledged today that thousands of bones were taken from dead babies without parental consent to help ascertain the impact of atmospheric nuclear testing. The disclosure was the more shocking in light of separate revelations earlier this year that dead children's organs had been removed without their parents' knowledge or consent by a Dutch pathologist working in the north-western port city of Liverpool. The newest admission will almost certainly add to a chorus of calls by advocacy groups for far stricter laws to ensure disclosure by physicians of their use of body parts, particularly since Britain's medical profession is often depicted by patients as high-handed and unresponsive to inquiries. But it also seemed redolent of a period when the threat of nuclear war permeated Britain and other societies with uncertainty and angst while superpower rivalry bred a culture of intense secrecy. At that time in the 1950's and 1960's, hundreds of atmospheric nuclear tests were conducted as the United States and the Soviet Union, along with lesser nuclear powers like Britain and France, scrambled to refine weapons of mass destruction in anticipation of World War III. A spokeswoman for the Atomic Energy Authority said the secret testing of children's bones might in fact have produced a positive result by contributing to Britain's ban on atmospheric testing, in 1963. That was part of the first East-West arms accord, the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, which ended nuclear explosions in the atmosphere and permitted them only beneath the earth. The British research established that the level of the radioactive isotope strontium 90 in infant bones had increased during the period when atmospheric nuclear testing was prevalent. "The program was done for the best of reasons," said Beth Taylor of the atomic energy agency. "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." After the 1963 ban, nuclear testing continued underground. The agency said the thigh bones from some 3,400 dead infants were removed and incinerated between 1954 and 1970 before being tested for levels of strontium 90. The isotope is able to penetrate human systems because it shares some properties with calcium, which is absorbed by bones and plants. The tests were carried out in Glasgow and southeast London. Word of the tests first emerged at Yorkhill Children's Hospital in Glasgow last June. "We have no evidence that parents were asked if the bone samples could be used and I think we have to assume that they were not," the Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman said. "I do not know the dates of the rules and regulations, but I am pretty sure in the 1950's doctors would have just said the research was all for the best and the samples could just be taken." The remarks suggested a profound cultural change that has overtaken Britain since the 1950's and 1960's when the medical profession was rarely challenged to explain itself in public. The agency said the bone samples were supplied after post mortem examinations and the tests reflected concerns about the spread of radioactivity from nuclear tests that had already contaminated milk. Levels of radioactivity rose rapidly between the start of the testing program and about 1964, one year after the ban on nuclear testing. Disclosure of the program elicited unease among campaigners seeking greater openness about medical testing. "There are so many projects like this and we have no idea how many," said a spokeswoman for an advocacy group called Scottish Parents for a Public Inquiry Into Organ Retention. "Parents up until now have had no say in anything that has been done to their children after death. They felt that their children's bodies did not belong to them." While hospitals in London and Glasgow have been linked to the research, there are also suggestions that hospitals in other parts of the country were involved. Additionally, last June, Australia's Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency said bones from dead children were sent for testing to Britain and the United States. The testing for radioactivity was not related to more recent cases of organ retention. Earlier this year the British government castigated a Dutch pathologist, Dick van Velzen, for "unethical and illegal" behavior in retaining human organs without consent. "The pain caused to the parents by this dreadful sequence of events is unforgivable," the report said. The disclosures coincided with another official study ackowledging that hospitals and other institutions around Britain had retained more than 100,000 hearts, brains, lungs and other organs, often without the knowledge of the relatives of the dead. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company