Survivors of the Duplessis-era orphanages in Quebec want officials to exhume several hundred bodies in an abandoned cemetery in Montreal so they can be tested for evidence of medical experiments.

Rod Vienneau, a spokesperson for the group of so-called Duplessis orphans, said experiments they suspect were performed on living children included lobotomies.

Any evidence turned up by the tests would be used in a suit against the government, the Roman Catholic church and the doctors, said Daniel Lighter, the group's lawyer.

Maurice Duplessis was the premier of Quebec from 1944-59. During those years, about 20,000 Quebec orphans were sent to asylums and to other church-run institutions because the province could get more federal money to care for people labelled mentally deficient.

Nuns running the orphanages were also allowed to sell unclaimed bodies to medical schools for $10. No one knows how many orphans ended up on the dissection tables for medical students.

Many survivors say they were sexually abused at the orphanages and forced to work in slave-labour conditions. Some say they were experimented on.