Part 11 (1/2)

The convicts always knew when Carl h.e.l.ler, the doctor in charge of the medical experiments, was inside the Salem penitentiary.1 They could tell by the footsteps, the brisk tap-tap of his wingtips as he came and went from the prison hospital at all hours of the day and night. Decades later a few still remembered his rich-man look; the expensive suits, the silk s.h.i.+rts and cuff links, the pipe clenched between his teeth. He had thinning brown hair, soft pale cheeks, and lived in a beautiful home, all gla.s.s and steel, on a rainy spit of land in northwestern Was.h.i.+ngton. From his living room, he could watch the clouds sweep across the Olympic Mountains. Surrounding him were abstract paintings, sculpture, and artifacts from Indians who once lived on the fog-shrouded coast. Not far from the house was an aviary flooded with the milky light of the Pacific Northwest and filled with the flas.h.i.+ng wings of exotic birdsa”Venezuelan screamers, Peking robins, spoonbills, blue-cheeked borbets. At symposiums in Mexico City, London, Berlin, and Sao Paulo, h.e.l.ler shared the breakthroughs he was making in unraveling the secrets of male fertility and the complex process of spermatogenesis, the origin and development of sperm cells in the human male. The raw material for his studies was provided by convicts at the maximum security facility in Salem, Oregon. Carl h.e.l.ler had discovered that Robert Stone was right about prisoners: They did make ideal test subjects.2 The penitentiary, h.e.l.ler once wrote, was aour most unique and prized facility.a3 Every few weeks h.e.l.ler made the 422-mile round trip to the penitentiary where he conducted his hormone experiments. Built in 1886, the prison was surrounded by high walls topped with dense coils of concertina wire. Armed guards prowled the towers overlooking the yard. Visitors, including h.e.l.ler, had to pa.s.s through as many as seven gates to reach the area where the male prisoners lived. Some of the convicts liked h.e.l.ler; others said he gave them the creeps.

In exchange for partic.i.p.ating in his experiments, the inmates got cash payments that were equal to hundreds of times what they would have earned in daily prison wages. With the money, they bought cigarettes, coffee, toothpaste, shampoo, tools for the hobby shop. When they underwent a vasectomy or a testicular biopsy, they sometimes got high on Nembutal and Demerol. Many viewed h.e.l.ler as a ticket to heaven, a fleeting ride that lasted a month or a day. But over the following years, the following decades, there was h.e.l.l to pay. And pay. And pay.

Educated at the University of Wisconsin, where he obtained a medical degree and two Ph.D.as, Carl h.e.l.ler was one of the worldas leading endocrinologists when he began his hormone experiments at the Salem prison in the late 1950s. (His brother was Walter h.e.l.ler, President John F. Kennedyas economic advisor.) Married four times and the father of three children, h.e.l.ler was in search of a male birth control pill because he thought athe womanas involvement was emotional, whereas the manas was rational.a4 His research agenda broadened in September of 1962 when he attended a three-day conference in Fort Collins, Colorado, on the effects of radiation on the reproductive system. Sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission, the conference occurred about a year after the AEC and NASA had begun developing a cooperative research program to study the biological impact of s.p.a.ce radiation on astronauts. C. Alvin Paulsen, one of h.e.l.leras former proteges, was also at the conference. Paulsen had helped h.e.l.ler with some of the hormone experiments at the Salem penitentiary, but after completing his residency, Paulsen had struck out on his own and had already begun to develop a reputation as a talented endocrinologist in his own right.

h.e.l.ler and Paulsen were experts on the human reproductive system but had only recently become acquainted with radiation. h.e.l.ler got his introduction when he began injecting radioactive thymidine, also called tritiated thymidine, into the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es of prisoners in an effort to better understand the complex process by which male sperm developed. A newsletter published by the Pacific Northwest Research Foundation, the Seattle research laboratory where h.e.l.ler worked (today known as the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center), described the radioactive material as ahighly dangerous.a5 Paulsen had received his introduction to radiation when he was called in as a consultant after three men were accidentally irradiated in an accident in April of 1962 at the Hanford Reservation.

Scientists from all over the world who were investigating the effects of radiation on the reproductive systems of animals attended the Fort Collins symposium. aThe whole conference,a h.e.l.ler recalled in a deposition taken in 1976: finally focused on man.6 A given group at Fort Collins was working on mice and another group was working on bulls, and then they concluded what would happen to man. They extrapolated the data from bulls or mice to man. I commented one day to Dr. Henshaw, who was then the medical graduate with the AEC, that if they were so interested in whether it was happening to man, why were they fussing around with mice and beagle dogs, and canaries and so on? If they wanted to know about man, why not work on man? That interested enough people from the Atomic Energy Commission present that they got together a formal meeting to see what we might do, what questions we might answer with our setup in Salem.

Paul Henshaw was not a amedical graduatea but an old hand at the AEC who ended up serving as the liaison between Carl h.e.l.ler and C. Alvin Paulsen and the commission during the early years of the prisoner experiments. Henshaw was also director of research from 1952 to 1954 for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the organization that donated some of the seed money to the research effort to find a birth control pill. Meta h.e.l.ler, who worked closely with her husband, described Henshaw as a distinguished-looking man in his fifties: tall, well proportioned, with dark graying hair.7 Henshaw had worked as a biologist at the Met Lab during the Manhattan Project. A year and a half after the Nagasaki and Hiros.h.i.+ma bombings, he and another Met Lab colleague, Austin Brues, were sent to j.a.pan in order to advise the Secretary of War and the National Academy of Sciences about the feasibility of setting up a long-term study of the survivors. In a breezily cheerful account of their mission before the Chicago Literary Club, Brues later recalled: aHappily enough, n.o.body higher up had got interested enough in our business to dignify it with some t.i.tle such as Operation Meathead.8 aSomewhere along the line, while standing on a windy corner waiting for transportation, Paul got the idea that we should have a name and suggested the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commissiona because it would be called ABCC. We put that in a couple of reports and ever since then that has been the designation of the entire project whose feasibility we were to consider.a (The project is still ongoing and is today called the Radiation Effects Research Foundation.) One of the long-term effects the ABCC would attempt to track was the impact of the bombings on the reproductive system. Stafford Warren and Joseph Howland had detected severe testicular atrophy and sterility in men exposed to radiation from the two bombs immediately after they arrived in j.a.pan with the Manhattan Project survey team. aAs early as the fourth day definite changes were noted in the testes,a they wrote.9 Even more disturbing, the two doctors also discovered changes among j.a.panese men who were not in the immediate vicinity of the blast area. aA definite decrease in the sperm count of patients in areas adjacent to the bomb explosion was found to be apparently a result of exposure to low dosages.a Most worrisome to the A-bomb doctors were the mutations that n.o.bel laureate Herman Muller had warned might take 1,000 years to become manifest. Such concerns had not diminished with time. In his closing address to the Fort Collins partic.i.p.ants, Henshaw himself noted that 50 to 100 rads doubled the number of mutations in some species.

Inspired by what he had heard at the Fort Collins conference, h.e.l.ler returned to his laboratory and began drafting a proposal. By February 1963, less than six months later, the AEC had a neatly typed package from him describing a new series of experiments he hoped to perform at the Oregon State Prison: aWe propose to apply known amounts of ionizing radiation directly to the testes of normal men,a the first page began.10 Among other things, h.e.l.leras team planned to determine the minimum amount of radiation that would cause apermanent damagea of sperm cells and how testicular changes caused by radiation affected the secretion of various hormones. aDr. h.e.l.ler,a the proposal continued, ahas spent enough time behind bars to complete a one-year sentence (with time off for good behavior!). Considered neither a acopa nor a acon,a he has the kind of rapport so necessary for investigations with a convict population.a At about the same time that h.e.l.ler sent his proposal to the AEC, Paulsen, who was on friendly but compet.i.tive terms with h.e.l.ler, submitted his own plan for a prison study to be performed at the Was.h.i.+ngton State Prison in Walla Walla. Paulsen had begun developing his proposal several months before the Fort Collins conference. aAnd how shall I put it?11 He (h.e.l.ler) became aware of what I was doing and he initiated his study of effects of radiation,a a still-compet.i.tive Paulsen told advisory committee staffers in 1994.

In his research proposal Paulsen explained that he had discovered the paucity of data on the effects of radiation on the human testes when he was called to evaluate the agonadal consequencesa for the three men injured in the Hanford accident. With s.p.a.ce travel and the construction of nuclear power plants under way, Paulsen said he felt it was essential to acquire more information. aIn our atomic age society, there is always present the possibility of radiation accidents resulting in significant radiation dose to one or more people,a he wrote.12 aThe ultimate accident would be a nuclear war involving mult.i.tudes of people.a The procedures and goals of the two experiments were very similar, but the type of radiation that the doctors planned to administer to the prisonersa t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es was different. h.e.l.ler proposed to bombard t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es with X rays. Paulsen intended eventually to irradiate the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es of the Was.h.i.+ngton prisoners with neutrons from a generator developed by scientists from Hanford. But until the generator was ready, his plan was to use a radium source. Paulsen also hoped to explore various substances that could protect against radiation damage, noting that Berkeley scientists had achieved promising results by injecting olive oil in the testes of rats.

Scientists at AEC headquarters and their consultants were simultaneously excited and a little squeamish at the prospect of these experiments. aBecause of the uniqueness of this experiment, including the experimental material available, I feel that no opportunity should be overlooked for getting the maximum possible amount of information out of it,a wrote Lauriston Taylor, one of the scientists who helped Robley Evans set the first radiation standards.13 aI think one should also bear in mind the possibility that at some time some ado-goodera organization may suddenly realize that we are doing radiation experiments on prisoners and cause such a furor as to bring about a political decision to stop the work. This, incidentally, makes it highly important in reporting the work, to pay a good deal of attention to the public relations aspects.a The long-term consequences of radiation for the human reproductive system had been on the minds of the Manhattan Project/AEC doctors for at least two decades. Hundreds of animal experiments with mice, rats, sheep, dogs, and donkeys had been performed. But no scientist from within the weapons establishment had ever dared to do the experiments h.e.l.ler and Paulsen were about to begin. aThis proposal is a direct14 attack on our problem,a wrote Charles Edington, an AEC official from headquarters. aIam for support at the requested level as long as we are not liable.a Then, almost as an afterthought, he mused, aI wonder about possible carcinogenic effects of such treatments.a In July of 1963 the AEC approved both contracts. The commission apparently saw the two studies as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get the data it needed and to relate and compare the results. Both h.e.l.ler and Paulsen were asked to proceed cautiously and to aminimize publicitya a.s.sociated with the program.15 Human experimentation, particularly with unproven drugs, was widespread in prisons throughout the United States at the time the testicular radiation experiments began. But some scientists were already growing uneasy with medical research on captive populations. An official at the National Inst.i.tutes of Health in 1964 wrote that convicts could not be volunteers in the same sense as free men and women. Prisoners were subject to tacit forms of coercion and more p.r.o.ne to being exposed to risky experiments. aFor these reasons it is especially important to discourage prisoners from volunteering for medical projects; and when they are used at all, to utilize projects of truly minimal risk, if any.a16 Meta h.e.l.ler said scientists and corrections officials felt that it was only a matter of time before such studies would be banned. aThey knew the clock was ticking, you bet.a17 Before the clock stopped, h.e.l.ler and Paulsen in separate experiments irradiated the reproductive organs of 131 men.

Sixty-seven convicts at the Oregon State Prison had their t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es bombarded with anywhere from 8 to 600 rads of radiation between 1963 and 1971. The subjects also underwent numerous testicular biopsies and were vasectomized when their partic.i.p.ation was concluded. In addition to the tritiated thymidine, some of the inmates may have been injected with carbon-14, a radioactive tracer.18 The prisoners generally received $5 per month while they were in the program, $10 for each biopsy and $100 for the vasectomy at the conclusion of the program. h.e.l.ler received a total of $1.12 million in grant money from the AEC.19 At the Was.h.i.+ngton State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, sixty-four men were irradiated between 1963 and 1969 with anywhere from 7.5 to 400 rads. The prisoners in Paulsenas study were paid approximately $5 a month during the observation period, $25 in the month the testicular biopsies were performed, and $100 when they underwent a vasectomy.20 Paulsen received $505,000 from the AEC.

h.e.l.ler and an a.s.sistant initially made the round-trip from Seattle to Salem every other week, working two full days and two full evenings in the penitentiary. Warden C. T. Gladden, in a 1963 letter to Oregon Attorney General Robert Thornton, complained that h.e.l.ler had ataken advantage of our good will by violating many of our custodial regulations such as having close custody inmates out of their cells for partic.i.p.ation in the program during late evening hours.a21 The warden also confessed in his letter that he had grave misgivings about the h.e.l.ler program. aI cannot help but believe that the program is potentially dangerous or at least embarra.s.sing to this inst.i.tution and the state of Oregon.a The penitentiaryas Catholic chaplain, he continued, araised strenuous objectionsa to the program and forbade any registered Catholic from partic.i.p.ating. aAs a matter of fact, the Catholic chaplain has been successful in establis.h.i.+ng an agreement with Dr. h.e.l.ler that he will not accept registered Catholics as patients in his programs.a h.e.l.ler had the use of a completely equipped operating room, scrub room, and hospital beds. The convicts themselves served as nurses, orderlies, and lab technicians. h.e.l.ler developed a close relations.h.i.+p with some of the inmates and tried to help them when they were paroled from prison. He wrote letters of recommendation for the inmate technicians and even loaned money to a few of the men when they were released from the penitentiary. One of the convicts, Baxter Max Hignite, worked for several months at h.e.l.leras Seattle laboratory when he was paroled from prison and even lived in h.e.l.leras house for a short time.22 In the 1970s, he was one of several inmates who sued h.e.l.ler.

Hignite served as h.e.l.leras right arm in the penitentiary. An intelligent, muscular man with thick brown hair, Hignite recruited many of the convicts for the radiation experiment and a.s.sisted in the medical procedures. Harold Bibeau, who was then twenty-two years old and serving a twelve-year sentence for manslaughter, was one of the inmates recruited by Hignite. The older man warned Bibeau to stay away from the hormone program because of the aweird medical effectsa but a.s.sured him the radiation program was perfectly safe.23 Initially Bibeau was rejected for the program because prison records listed him as Catholic, but h.e.l.ler eventually accepted Bibeau after he a.s.sured the doctor he wasnat areally Catholic.a24 Bibeau said h.e.l.ler often talked to him about the Nuremberg Code and medical ethics. h.e.l.ler also told Bibeau the data from the experiment would be used to help NASA and the s.p.a.ce program.

h.e.l.ler interviewed the prospective candidates to make sure they were healthy and that they would be cooperative subjectsa”that is, show up for irradiation and biopsy appointments; provide urine, blood, and s.e.m.e.n samples; and undergo a vasectomy at the conclusion of the experiment. (The vasectomy was administered in order to prevent genetic mutations from being pa.s.sed down.) A prison psychologist interviewed the candidates to make sure they understood the consequences of the experiment. The psychologist wrote of Bibeau: aNever married, quite vague about future.25 Feels he doesnat want childrena”shouldnat have any. I agree. No contraindication to sterilization.a The prison psychologist was also supposed to evaluate and screen out candidates who had severe emotional problems. But a convict named Canyon Easton, who had been sent to prison on a rape charge and on several occasions had attempted to castrate himself, actually was recommended for the program. A psychologist wrote on September 3, 1964, aI feel this man is a likely candidate for benefit from Dr. h.e.l.leras program.26 Iall recommend him for inclusion if he qualifies otherwise.aa Easton partic.i.p.ated in h.e.l.leras hormone and radiation experiments and underwent fourteen testicular biopsies. When he enrolled in the h.e.l.ler program, Easton said he was filled with shame. aI felt I was beyond the pale.a27 Once he was paroled from prison, Easton went through several stormy relations.h.i.+ps. One woman whom he was dating actually became frightened that she could contract cancer after she learned of his involvement in the radiation experiment. aOn Dec. 22, 1975,a he told an Oregon legislative committee, aI castrated myself so I would not have to deal with s.e.xual problems again.a28 Easton was reincarcerated in 1986 for castrating another man who attempted to rape his nieces. When asked about the incident, he explained: aI did castrate the man who told me aGet one of the twins!a I asked, aWhich one?a29 He said, aIt doesnat make any difference!a I asked, aWhy do you want her?a He said, aIam going to f.u.c.k her!a I told him, Iam going to cut your nuts off! aHe whined a bit but no more than my twelve-year-old nieces would have if he would have raped them.a On August 17, 1963, the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es of the first Oregon inmate were bombarded with 200 rads of radiation by a crude-looking apparatus that had been designed by h.e.l.ler and his colleagues. The machine looked like two orange crates stuck together and mounted on wheels for easy movement. Each of the acratesa consisted of an X-ray unit in a lead-lined box. Between the two boxes was a small Plexiglas cup filled with water.

The p.e.n.i.ses of the test subjects were taped to their bellies and a torn bed sheet about one-half-inch wide and a few inches long was tied above the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es to keep them extended away from the body. Then the men lay facedown over the machine and lowered their organs into the cup. The water was maintained at 93 to 94 degrees to encourage the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es to drop and to ensure the radiation was evenly distributed. A series of peepholes and mirrors enabled the technician to see that the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es were properly positioned in the cup. A control panel was located in an outer room.

The AEC asked h.e.l.ler to start with 600 rads. Although he did eventually irradiate fifteen men with 600 rads (one actually received a total of 708 rads in three separate doses), initially h.e.l.ler was hesitant to administer such large amounts. Mavis Rowley, h.e.l.leras longtime a.s.sistant, recalled: I mean he felt a little uncomfortable about doing 600, but at that time, they had said that 600 rads was probably around the LD-50 dose for humans [the dose that produces sterility in 50 percent of those exposed], and so they wanted to start in there and see, okay, where are you going with your population survival.30 Are they going to be able to have children? And what are their children going to be like, and so forth. So we were having those kind of what, I thought, were odd conversations.

The convicts said they felt nothing, except perhaps a slight tingling or warmth, as the radiation was delivered. Afterward they said they developed rashes, peeling, and blisters on their s.c.r.o.t.u.ms. In the months and years following the exposure, many also said that they experienced pain during s.e.xual intercourse, had difficulty maintaining erections, and their t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es shrank in size.

The biopsies were done anywhere from minutes, to days, weeks, even months after the exposure. The men usually were taken from their cells to the prison hospital the night before the biopsy. The next morning they received a powerful mixture of painkillers and were wheeled into surgery. Baxter Hignite said in one of the depositions that were part of the inmatesa lawsuit against h.e.l.ler that several prisoners usually a.s.sisted in the surgery. One convict held the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es of the patient for the doctor and several others stood by to hold down the arms or legs of the subject in the event he began flailing.

The t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es were bathed in Novocain and the anesthetic was also injected into the skin. Then the doctor made an incision in the scrotal sac and removed a small sliver of flesh. No matter how deadened the flesh or how powerful the medication, many of the convicts said they invariably experienced excruciating pain. aMost of the times it felt like he took a pair of pliers and pulled a chunk of meat off my t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es.31 Thatas the kind of pain I would feel,a Baxter Hignite said in his deposition. Donald Mathena, who was serving a sentence for armed robbery and underwent sixteen or seventeen biopsies, said he almost vomited the first time. aRight in the middle of your stomach, you can feel them.32 It donat feel like theyare cutting. Even though they are, it feels like theyare just tearing it.a Ivan Dale Hetland, who was doing time for manslaughter, also said he could feel the surgery away upa inside his stomach. aMade me want to draw my legs up.33 And it made me grunt.a h.e.l.ler boasted in a 1965a”1966 progress report to the AEC that he had access to a avirtually ainexhaustiblea supply of fresh testicular biopsy material from physically normal men.a34 One AEC official, in an apparent attempt at humor, referred to the testicular samples as apounds of flesha then crossed off pounds and wrote agrams of flesh.a35 Some of the men who partic.i.p.ated in the experiments and were still in the Salem penitentiary said in 1994 interviews that drug abuse and h.o.m.os.e.xual behavior often occurred during the experiment. Remembered inmate Paul aConniea Tyrrell, aThey had a h.o.m.os.e.xual up there.36 I wonat give you his name. I donat need to. He would orally get these guys off, spit it in a jar for them.a Some of the inmates a.s.sisting in the experiment ingested the drugs that were supposed to be given to the biopsy patients. aUsed to be inmates would pa.s.s out from the medication,a recalled Tyrrell. aIf they liked you, you got a little extra. If they didnat like you, you were SOL (s.h.i.+t out of luck).a Tyrrell partic.i.p.ated in both the hormone and the radiation experiments. He had tumors removed from both b.r.e.a.s.t.s and died of heart failure in 1995 at the age of fifty-four. He was serving a life sentence for robbery and a.s.sault.

Dale Hetland said in a deposition that he underwent a vasectomy without any local anesthetic because an inmate with whom he had had a fist fight filled a syringe with sterile water instead of Novocain. aIt hurt bad and I complained to the doctor at the time that it hurt, and he said it shouldnat hurt, and I said it did hurt.a37 Hetland was irradiated twice, underwent twenty-four biopsies, and was injected twice in the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es with tritiated thymidine. aThey brought a little box in, a little tin box or a lead box with a handle on it.38 And when I asked what that was, they said it had a syringe with some radiation in it. And he explained to me that he was going to inject it into me. And he said it wouldnat hurt me or nothing, it would just sting a little bit. Which wasnat the truth. It stung a whole lot and hurt a whole lot.a Hetland said he developed degenerative bone disease of the spine and lost part of his stomach as a result of the radiation. He wrote in 1985: aIt was no better than the experiments conducted by the Germans on prisoners in concentration camps in my opiniona”this experiment on me with live radiation has caused me over twenty years of pain and it has nearly destroyed my body.a39 Another inmate, Art Clawson, told a reporter for the Oregon Times Magazine, aI spent years in jail, and Iave never done a crime like these experiments.40 The only word I can think of is crime. When you start playing with peopleas physical well-being, their body and emotions, thatas got to be one of the worst laws you can break.a Many of the convicts also said that the inmates operated the X-ray machine. aI operated the control panel myself,a Baxter Hignite said when questioned under oath about the experiment.41 aDid you set the dial for the amount of radiation that was to be administered?a an attorney asked.

aNo. Usually there would be another inmate do that.a aWho was that?a aWell, thereas been several of them over the years.aa aYou say that these men set the amount of radiation?a aYes. And they a.s.sisted in the same ways that I have too.a aWere there occasions when only inmate technicians were in the control room?a aYes.a aWas that the normal procedure?a aNo. Usually there was a doctor in the hospital. Dr. h.e.l.ler or one of his designates. Dr. Warner, Dr. Howieson.a aWere there ever occasions when there were no doctors in the immediate area where this was taking place?a aYes.a aWhile someone was being radiated?a aYes.a The men who partic.i.p.ated in the h.e.l.ler program said they did it for the money, pure and simple. The payments seemed like a pittance to outsiders. But to convicts with no money, friends, or family, the h.e.l.ler program was a gold mine and the payments undoubtedly const.i.tuted a coercive factor in the informed consent process. Prisoners at that time received twenty-five cents a day in wages. Just for being on the h.e.l.ler program, they got five dollars a month, which was the equivalent of twenty days of work. A biopsy on one t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e brought in ten dollars, equal to forty daysa pay. And the hundred-dollar payment for the vasectomy was the equivalent of 400 days of work.

aSo whenever you needed some money you would ask for a biopsy?a42 an attorney asked Dale Hetland.

aYeah, I would like to have had one every month if I could have had one, for the money. I didnat like them. I liked the money.a The AEC established an advisory committee composed of radiation consultants to oversee both the h.e.l.ler and Paulsen programs. The committee met in Seattle in 1963, 1965, and 1967. The AEC commissioners themselves were briefed on the experiments in 1968 when Glenn Seaborg was chairman.43 The function of the Seattle meetings, according to one AEC doc.u.ment, was to conduct a apenetratinga review of the two experiments with athe view being the opportunity to repeat or extend this type of work probably will not occur again soon, and that every effort should be made to a.s.sure project objectives.a44 Walter Snyder, an Oak Ridge scientist who attended the first meeting, likened the risks from the experiment to aperhaps smoking, being overweight, etc.a45 Following the first meeting, h.e.l.ler was encouraged to study the effects of radiation on the male chromosomes, a complex and difficult endeavor in which he had little experience. The AEC also was interested in the effects of low chronic doses of radiation on the testes. h.e.l.ler subsequently irradiated the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es of one convict over an eleven-week period with five rads of radiation per week. He remarked in his progress report for 1965a”1966 that small chronic doses delivered over a long period of time caused more damage than the same amount of radiation delivered at once.46 By 1968 the AEC knew that as little as eight rads produced a detectable decrease in sperm counts.