Mother’s agony after dead son’s brain was removed
A GRIEVING mother at the centre of Scotland’s baby ashes scandal has spoken about her horror at finding out 10 years after her son was cremated that doctors had removed his brain for medical research without her permission.
The discovery meant Michelle Thomson, 37, was forced to arrange a second funeral after his remains were sent to her home in a tiny coffin – minus Dylon’s brain because it had been incinerated.
It has taken the motherof-three seven years to speak out about her double agony at being told there were no ashes after his cremation and that her son’s organs had been removed without her knowledge at Glasgow’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children (Yorkhill).
Her five-month-old son died of cot death in May 1997 and she held a funeral service for him at Daldowie Crematorium, near Glasgow.
She requested her son’s ashes but, like hundreds of other parents across the country currently fighting for justice, she was told that there were none because babies’ bones are so soft.
She is campaigning with other parents to find out what happened to their babies’ remains and her case will be probed by a national investigations team, led by former Lord Advocate Dame Elish Angiolini.
It aims to help locate the missing ashes after a judgeled commission called for an urgent review of working practices crematoria.
The independent Infant Cremation Commission was established in the wake of revelations that the ashes of babies had been disposed of at Edinbu r g h ’ s Mor t on h a l l Crematorium without the knowledge of their parents since the 1960s.
Ms Thomson, from Glasgow, said: “I have been robbed of my son twice. Once by the crematorium who denied me his ashes and then by Yorkhill Hospital who took his body parts without any consideration for how I would feel about that and without permission.
“I can’t believe anyone would be allowed to get away with that.”
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said they had apologised for retaining and disposing of her son’s remain without her permission.
A spokeswoman said: “We apologised at the time for the distress caused and repeat this again today.”
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