A Scots family have been left with nothing after 'soul-destroying' blaze ripped through their home while they were at the supermarket.
26.01.2022 - 02:05 / dailyrecord.co.uk
The mother of a baby who died at just a week old has begun a hunger strike in a bid to get his remains back.
Lydia Reid lost her son Gary in 1975 but later discovered his remains had not been buried in a coffin bearing his name.
When the casket was exhumed four years ago under a court order, experts concluded it had never contained human remains.
Edinburgh mum Lydia became a campaigner for exposing the use of children's body parts for research without parental consent after losing Gary, and says to this day she has no idea what has truly happened to her son's remains.
She has now set up camp outside the Crown Office in the capital to begin a hunger strike, saying she has run out of other options in trying to get Gary's remains back.
She told the BBC : "This is a hunger strike to object to a system where there is no legal pathway to stop Police Scotland and Crown Office taking the parts of my child Gary Paton.
"I have no other legal option left, so at 73 I'm having to camp for the first time, which is very difficult when I'm disabled.
"I'm thinking about my boy and it is the only chance left of him getting a burial."
The Record has reported extensively on Lydia's fight for answers as to what happened to her baby boy.
She claims that a body she was shown at the funeral home after Gary died was not that of her son.
In the years after his death she embarked on a search for answers that helped to expose the UK-wide practice of retaining remains for research purposes without consent.
The NHS has previously admitted that about 6000 organs and tissue samples were retained by Scottish hospitals between 1970 and 2000 – many from children.
Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool was at the centre of the scandal. It was found to
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