Part 11 (2/2)

The AECas Paul Henshaw visited the Oregon State Prison on July 21, 1964. On the day of his visit, h.e.l.ler zapped his first subject with 600 rads: a forty-nine-year-old convict and the oldest man in the program. In a memo to his files, Henshaw said nothing about that procedure but described in glowing terms the cooperative att.i.tude of the inmates and prison officials: It was apparent at once that there was indeed an att.i.tude of eagerness about the worka”a feeling of pride about being able to partic.i.p.ate in the investigative program.47 Partic.i.p.ants were seen to a.s.sist in record keeping, management of program schedules and equipment, and even in doing some of the technical work (e.g. sperm counts). It was obvious, also, that whatever elements of derision a.s.sociated with the necessary s.e.xual aspects, which can so easily become a feature, were either nonexistent, essentially, or had been overcome. The men seemed to be proud of their part in a scientific program and pleased with the prospect of vasectomy as a final result. Actually, as Dr. h.e.l.ler manages the selection of subjects for partic.i.p.ation, they must express a desire and actually ask for a vasectomy. Of interest is the fact that some of the partic.i.p.ants have willingly agreed to accept dosages that will produce some degree of scrotal skin burn. This seems clearly understood and antic.i.p.ated as a matter of routine. After seeing the partic.i.p.ants, the writer was taken to meet Warden Clarence T. Gladden. He was matter-of-fact in his manner and his reference to the study being promoted. He gave no indication of dissatisfaction concerning it. Although matter-of-fact in manner, he expressed a feeling that scientific studies, such as the one being performed by Dr. h.e.l.ler, actually exerts a favorable influence on prison life. While he did not say as much directly, he made the writer feel that he wasa”the Wardena”pleased that the Atomic Energy Commission is maintaining direct contact with the work he is promoting in his inst.i.tution.

Around Christmas of 1964, h.e.l.ler got a letter from Douglas Grahn, a scientist at Argonne National Laboratory who cochaired a panel formed in 1961 to evaluate radiation exposure during manned s.p.a.ce flights. The panel was reconst.i.tuted in 1964 to reevaluate the biological problems of s.p.a.ce radiation when NASA began considering flights lasting from two weeks to a year or more.

In his letter, Grahn said the s.p.a.ce panel (which included a number of old hands, among them s.h.i.+elds Warren, Wright Langham, James Nickson, and Clarence Lushbaugh) was concerned about radiation damage to the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es of astronauts. He asked h.e.l.ler if he would be interested in sharing his information as a consultant to the panel. An Oak Ridge doctor, Grahn confided, aindicated you do have some very critical information for our consideration, and we certainly hope that you will be able to help us one way or another.a48 Eleven days later h.e.l.ler sent Grahn a three-page letter outlining how various radiation doses affected the male testes and sperm development. aHave you or your panel any suggestions regarding other information you should like to have, or other parameters that might be worth studying?a h.e.l.ler queried.49 aThis opportunity afforded to us, which may or may not be repeated or continued, should be made to yield the greatest possible pertinent information.a The following year h.e.l.ler attended two meetings of the s.p.a.ce Radiation Study Panel at the National Academy of Sciences headquarters in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.50 Ironically, after military and civilian experts had spent many years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, h.e.l.ler believed he had found the ideal dosimeter: human t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. h.e.l.ler told NASA officials that he could estimate precisely the radiation doses received by astronauts if he was allowed to do testicular biopsies before and after the s.p.a.ce missions. But the astronauts had no desire to submit to such a procedure. Said Meta h.e.l.ler, aThey only cared about the adventure.51 They just werenat scientifically oriented.a One of h.e.l.leras ideas, she said, was to have testicular biopsies done on all men working in the weapons plants. Then if a worker was involved in an accident, the doctors could take a second testicular biopsy, compare it with the sample on file, and accurately a.s.sess the radiation dose. aIt would have been good industrial medicine, you know, because everybody knew the G.o.dd.a.m.n dosimeters werenat all that accurate,a Meta h.e.l.ler said.52 Grahn said he was somewhat uncomfortable around h.e.l.ler. There was a acertain collegialitya among the members of the s.p.a.ce panel that went back decades.53 But h.e.l.ler was atoo pushy,a he said. aAt the same time, there was a little sense of insecurity.a C. Alvin Paulsen did not have much contact with h.e.l.ler while the two radiation experiments were under way. Paulsen said he was intent upon establis.h.i.+ng his own ident.i.ty in the scientific world and had face-to-face meetings with h.e.l.ler only when they were cohosting one of the marathon ashow-and-tella meetings of the AECas outside advisory committee. Paulsen, who was sued in the mid-1990s by several men after the case received widespread publicity, said in a deposition, aThe Atomic Energy Commission, when they came here for reviews, based on efficiency in economics, required us to be in the same room, both teams reporting the data.54 There was no collaboration of a scientific nature.a Paulsen had worked for h.e.l.ler when he was a medical student at the University of Oregon Medical School from 1947 to 1952. Then he moved east to Detroit, where he did his interns.h.i.+p and residency at the Detroit Receiving Hospital, the same hospital where h.e.l.ler had done his training. When Paulsen returned to the West Coast, he joined the Pacific Northwest Research Foundation and resumed his research with h.e.l.ler. At that time, h.e.l.ler was conducting the hormone experiments at the Oregon State Penitentiary. Although Paulsen has played down his involvement in the hormone experiments, he is listed as a coauthor on several scientific papers written about those studies.

Paulsen worked at the Pacific Northwest Research Foundation from June of 1958 until 1961 and then became a full-time faculty member at the University of Was.h.i.+ngton and chief of endocrinology at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital. h.e.l.ler was disappointed about losing Paulsen but recognized that he awas gaining a certain amount of stature on his own,a Meta h.e.l.ler recalled.

Paulsen said he was apparently chosen by Hanford officials to examine the three men injured in the April 1962 accident because of a textbook article he had written on the testes. Two months later, he was talking with AEC officials in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., about a possible research proposal. Dave Bruner, the AECas a.s.sistant director for medical and health research, wrote in a letter to Paulsen, aI personally do not see why people are nervous about such research, but it is somewhat unconventional and it does deal with a peculiarly sensitive area of human individual rights.a.5.5 Paulsen said in his deposition that he consulted with numerous corrections and medical officials about the experiment, including Lauren Donaldson, an old buddy of Stafford Warrenas who had established an elaborate program to study how the radioactive waste discharged into the Columbia River might affect the salmon population. Then Paulsen came up with his proposal to irradiate prisonersa t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es.

Paulsen said he secured the approval to proceed with the experiment from the superintendent of the state penitentiary, the director of state inst.i.tutions, the a.s.sistant dean at the University of Was.h.i.+ngtonas medical school, and the chairman of the medical schoolas Clinical Research Committee.56 Initially Paulsen planned to use a radium source on the prisonersa t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, but he switched to X rays after he was told the dose would be too uncertain.

An energetic scientist with dark hair and bushy eyebrows, Paulsen was usually surrounded by a group of uncommunicative a.s.sistants when he visited the prison. Although he was amiable enough, he always seemed to be in a rush. aNow he looks old.57 But back then, he was on fire,a Don Byers, an inmate who was serving time for armed robbery at the Airway Heights Correctional Center in Was.h.i.+ngton state, said in an interview in 1995. Rob White, another former prisoner, said Paulsen ahad a magnetic personality. He didnat talk down to us. He seemed to accord us some dignity as human beings.a White, now a retail clerk at a garden center in Seattle, was a radiation volunteer, or RV No. 14. White said he joined the program because of the money and the fact that the experimenters promised to write the parole board. While the experimenters did not reveal what they intended to say to the board, the convicts nevertheless viewed it as a strong incentive. aThat was rather important to most of us,a White recalled. aThe money was also important, of course, because we were making fourteen cents an hour making license plates.a58 White said Paulsen made the experiment sound like aglorified chest X-rays,a telling the men they might experience a asunburn type of reaction.a White and other former test subjects said Paulsen never warned them of the possibility that they might contract cancer, but Paulsen said in his deposition the prisoners were orally informed of that risk.59 The convicts were irradiated in a specially designed room in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Was.h.i.+ngton State Penitentiary, the maximum-security facility in the eastern part of the state. White said the room looked like any ordinary X-ray facility. There was a long flat table, an overhead machine, and a lead-lined wall behind which the technician operated the equipment. Once the men were lying on their backs, their p.e.n.i.ses were taped to their bellies. Then a bag of sugar, four to five inches wide and about a foot long, was placed over the p.e.n.i.s and the lower abdomen area. A abolusa of sugar in a plastic container also was placed beneath their t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. (The sugar apparently was used because it scattered the X rays back into the exposed tissue.) The technician lowered the cone-shaped apparatus to within a few inches of the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, then stepped behind the wall and turned on the switch.

White, who was twenty-two years old and serving a sentence for a.s.sault, was irradiated with 400 rads to the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, the highest dose administered to any of the Was.h.i.+ngton prisoners. It took twenty minutes and six seconds. Several hours later, he said, he became nauseous and the skin in his groin area turned red. His thighs, abdomen, and b.u.t.tocks began peeling a few days later.

While Paulsen was irradiating prisoners with X rays, scientists at what was then called the Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory in Hanford were doing dosimetry studies with a neutron generator that was to be used on the convicts during the final phase of the experiment. Preliminary studies with mannequins had revealed that the eye, base of the sternum, urethra, bladder, a.n.u.s, and r.e.c.t.u.m also would get some radiation.60 No doc.u.ments have surfaced indicating that the neutron generator was actually used on the prisoners. But Don Byers, known as RV No. 71, is certain that he was irradiated with neutrons. In a telephone interview from the Airway Heights Correctional Center, he said, aI was told at the time I was getting 300 or 400 rads of neutrons.a61 However, Byersas medical records state only that he received 100 rads of X-ray radiation.

Byersas recollection of the irradiation procedure also differed from Whiteas. Byers said he was taken to a room in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the hospital building and placed on a tilted table. His legs were spread, his knees were drawn up, and sandbags were stacked against him to hold him in place. aMy first impression of the room was the extreme thickness of the wallsa”probably a foot thick at least; and an extremely heavy door,a he wrote.62 aWhen the door was closed, it was exactly like a tomba”and the room was the most absolutely SILENT place I have ever been. There was an aperture in the wall across from me that looked like an arrow slit in the wall of a medieval castle. I had been cautioned to remain perfectly still until the door was openeda”and that it would be approximately 30 minutes for the procedure to be run.a Doc.u.ments released in 1994 show that scientists working at Pacific Northwest Laboratory, a research lab at the Hanford site where the dosimetry studies with the neutron generator were performed, sought to insulate themselves from any direct involvement with the medical aspects of the experiment. The reason for their action is unclear, but records suggest they were concerned about the possible legal liability. In 1967 a group of officials from the lab, including a scientist named Carlos Newton, attended the AECas review of the h.e.l.ler-Paulsen experiments in Seattle. In a trip report, Newton stressed that the scientists deliberately attempted to avoid any discussion of the medical effects of the experiments. aOur position of furnis.h.i.+ng technical information in the physical sciences seemed to be well established.63 No medical information was either asked of or volunteered by us.a Newton concluded his trip report with a astrictly private itema to his supervisor: aIn private discussions it appears that the personnel from the AEC were interested in completing the project as it now stands, but dead set against any expansion of the program. A fair statement would be that they feel aletas finish this up and get out.a A good BNW [Battelle Northwest] position also!a Paulsen had hoped to begin bombarding the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es of the Was.h.i.+ngton prisoners with neutrons by mid-1964, but it was not until 1968 that he sought approval from several University of Was.h.i.+ngton review committees to actually begin the procedure. Neutrons, which have no electric charge, deposit much larger amounts of radiation in living tissue and are on average ten times more damaging than X rays.

In October 1968 the University of Was.h.i.+ngtonas Radiation Safety Committee approved the study provided the following conditions were observed: The maximum neutron dose be limited to fifteen rads; no more than twenty subjects be irradiated; and Paulsenas consent forms be modified to include the possibility that the procedure carried a very small risk of testicular cancer.64 The proposal was then forwarded to the University Hospital Clinical Investigation Committee, which had approved Paulsenas X-ray studies in 1963 and 1966. The committee chose to reject the neutron experiment in 1969 on the grounds that the subject selection was inappropriate and that the potential hazards to the subjects exceeded the potential benefits to society.65 The chairman of the committee noted that Paulsenas experiment had begun before federal regulations governing human experiments were issued and questioned whether the study had ever been thoroughly reviewed by an inst.i.tutional review board.66 Paulsen then appealed the decision to two additional committees, both of which also rejected the neutron study on the same grounds. Discouraged but not yet defeated, Paulsen then abandoned the neutron study and subst.i.tuted a new proposal to irradiate another twenty-four prisoners with thirty rads of X rays. Twelve of those men were to be given testosterone prior to radiation in order to determine whether the male hormone was effective in reducing radiation injury.67 The revised plan was approved. But from within the prison system came a new opponent: Audrey Holliday, a blunt-speaking administrator and the first woman to head the research division of the Department of Inst.i.tutions. At a great personal price, Holliday was ultimately successful in halting an experiment that numerous academic committees couldnat, or wouldnat, bring to an end. Leonard Schroeter, a Seattle lawyer, remembered Holliday as a fearless woman who hated injustice. aI just loved her.68 She was a small, slim, Jean Arthurish person with a husky voice and a burning intensity.a Holliday learned of the experiment around July of 1969 from a doctor who had sat on one of the University of Was.h.i.+ngton review committees. She immediately wrote to Paulsen and demanded that all work stop until the Department of Inst.i.tutionsa Research Review Committee had a chance to a.n.a.lyze the study. Holliday was appalled by several arather disturbing elementsa of the Paulsen experiment, including the fact that many of the men who were irradiated and given vasectomies were relatively young.69 aTo be utterly frank with you,a she told George Farwell, the University of Was.h.i.+ngtonas vice president for research, awe never would have approved this research, regardless of the action of the university committees, if it had come to the attention of the Department of Inst.i.tutions Research Review Committee, which was, of course, not in existence at the time Dr. Paulsen accomplished the major portion of his work.a In a letter to her boss, William Conte, who was in favor of letting Paulsen complete his studies, Holliday wrote: I do not think we have a single leg to stand on if we allow this study to continue.a70 If, as the University Committee suggests, the research is of an essential nature, if there is no danger from the X-ray procedure itself, and if the research is ethically sound, then Dr. Paulsen should have no difficulty getting graduate students, medical students, his own patients, persons who want a vasectomy, other physicians, etc. to volunteer. If he does have difficulty getting them to volunteer, then I think that simply proves the point Iam trying to make, namely, that we have to consider there is high risk, that there is special psychologic and financial etc. inducement for this particular captive audience to volunteer for this type of study. We need, I think, to stand in a special relations.h.i.+p to captive populations and make certain that they are not operating on the a.s.sumption that they are already destroyed as human beings, that they do not see $100 for a vasectomy as being inducement enough to volunteer away their human rights, etc.

Several months later the departmentas Research Review Committee unanimously rejected Paulsenas proposal. aThe Committee felt strongly that the Paulsen project is inconsistent with general professional standards obtaining for the protection of the individual as research subject.71 For example, it seems clearly inconsistent with the standards laid down by the Nuremberg Code.a The committeeas findings finally persuaded Hollidayas boss, William Conte, to halt the experiment permanently. Paulsen said that he quarreled with Conte when he was told to end the experiment. aNeedless to say I was distressed because I wanted to follow some of them longer,a he recalled in 1994.72 Paulsen also got a call from s.h.i.+elds Warren while he was attending a meeting in New aYork. Look,a Paulsen remembered Warren saying, ayour questions have been answered.a73 Warren informed Paulsen that he would be receiving official notice shortly from the AEC that the program was canceled. Although Warren had nothing to do with the experiment, he probably had gotten involved in the controversy because he was still a consultant to the commission and was considered one of the worldas leading experts in radiation effects.

Despite the cease-and-desist orders, Paulsen apparently was still doing asome kind of unauthorized researcha at the penitentiary a year later, according to a confidential memo from Robert Sharpley, an official with the state of Was.h.i.+ngtonas Department of Social and Health Services.74 Sharpley then met with George Farwell, the University of Was.h.i.+ngtonas vice president for research. The two agreed that further research by Paulsen would have to be cleared through Farwellas office and that no experiments could be undertaken without review and approval by both the university and the Department of Social and Health Services.

Sharpley then met with Paulsen for two hours. According to Sharpleyas memo, he aleft no doubta that neither the university or the Department of Social and Health Services would tolerate further aunauthorized research or any attempts to bypa.s.sa the review requirements of the two inst.i.tutions. aIt is probably true,a Sharpley wrote, ato say that the Paulsen Case more than any other single research undertaking in the former Department of Inst.i.tutions had a p.r.o.nounced effect on general departmental research policy, research rules and regulations, and on formal review procedures.a As for Holliday, her efforts had provoked so much hostility from her boss that she began looking for another job. aI decided what the h.e.l.l and left as soon as I could find a suitable position,a she is quoted as saying in a 1976 letter to Dan Evans, then the governor of Was.h.i.+ngton.75 *

While Paulsen slugged it out with various committees, Carl h.e.l.leras testicular irradiation study in Salem, Oregon, was also drawing to a close. The last inmate in Oregon had been irradiated on May 6, 1971, and h.e.l.ler and his a.s.sistants had been a.n.a.lyzing samples and performing testicular biopsies since that time. h.e.l.ler suffered a debilitating stroke in December 1972 that paralyzed the left side of his body. Soon afterward Amos Reed, the administrator for Oregonas Corrections Division, ordered the shutdown of all medical experiments at the penitentiary. The announcement took h.e.l.leras research team by surprise, and several weeks later Mavis Rowley, C. Alvin Paulsen, and Daniel DiIaconi, the physician who performed the testicular biopsies, met with the administrator. Rowley hoped that Oregon prison officials would allow Paulsen to supervise the medical follow-up of h.e.l.leras test subjects.76 On top of Reedas desk was a copy of an Atlantic Monthly article by investigative journalist Jessica Mitford describing several experiments that were going on in the nationas prisons at the time. aHe pulled that article out and said that he wanted nothing like that to happen in terms of publicity nor in terms of future legal ha.s.sles, and therefore, that was it,a Rowley recalled. In a memo summarizing the meeting, Reed later wrote that the aexperimentersa were very concerned about the termination of the project and strongly urged him to reconsider his decision.77 aI asked if Dr. Paulsen, his family or his professional a.s.sociates were undergoing radiation experimentation and was told ano.a78 I opined that if the project was so worthwhile and so safe it would be encouraging to others if they became personally involved.a Reed also said he believed the inmates could not really give informed consent. aI saw these projects as exploitation of disadvantaged people.a h.e.l.leras stroke had occurred while he was trying to work out the details of a long-term medical monitoring program for the former subjects with the Atomic Energy Commission. Locating convicts who had been released from prison posed some difficult issues, particularly regarding privacy rights, but both h.e.l.ler and the AEC agreed the prisoners should be followed for at least twenty to twenty-five years. In one letter h.e.l.ler noted that the men should be given routine chest X rays because any tumor found in the testis was most likely to metastasize to, and often was revealed first, in lung tissue.79 h.e.l.leras stroke, combined with Reedas decision to halt the experiments, put an end to any medical follow-up efforts. It was the first of many failed attempts to come to terms with the experiment and provide proper care for former subjects.

38.

THE PLUTONIUM EXPERIMENT: PHASE TWO.

By the late 1960s, nearly all of the major human radiation experiments of the Cold War were under way. Scientists at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, had just completed collecting the data for a follow-up study of the pregnant women who drank the radioactive iron c.o.c.ktails; Eugene Saenger and his team in Cincinnati were struggling to work out the kinks in their bone marrow transplant program; the Holiday Inna”styled chamber in Oak Ridge that subjected patients to the low, chronic doses of radiation similar to what astronauts would experience in s.p.a.ce had just begun operating; Carl h.e.l.ler was discovering the incredible sensitivity of human testes to radiation; and C. Alvin Paulsen was about to submit to reviewers his proposal to irradiate prisonersa t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es with neutrons.

Countless radioactive tracer experiments also were ongoing at civilian and military hospitals and research inst.i.tutions throughout the country. Many of these experiments were aimed at better understanding how fallout moved through the food chain. At the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho, for example, radioactive iodine was intentionally released into pastures. Cows were led onto the contaminated pastures, where they grazed for several days, then they were milked, and humans drank the milk.1 The University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory conducted an experiment between 1961 and 1963 in which real and simulated fallout and solutions of strontium and cesium were fed to 102 subjects.2 At Hanford, humans were fed radioactive fish. Fifty-seven workers at Los Alamos ingested small spheres containing radioactive uranium-235 and manganese-54 so scientists could a.s.sess the potential hazards from the atmospheric reentry and burnup of rockets propelled by nuclear reactors or radioactive power supplies.3 The studies werenat limited to humans; insects, birds, honeybees, wild animals, even forests and gra.s.slands were subjected to experimentation. Many of the most bizarre of these experiments were carried out at the Savannah River Siteas Ecology Laboratory. Located near Augusta, Georgia, Savannah River is a 300-acre site established in 1950 to produce plutonium and tritium, which is used in thermonuclear bombs. Five production reactors and two chemical separation plants are located there.

In one experiment, two persimmon trees were injected early in the growing season with calcium-45. Web worms were placed on the trees to feed, then their larvae were transferred to uncontaminated leaves in a laboratory to establish calcium-45as half-life. Sixteen loblolly pines were ainoculateda with strontium-89. Field mice were fed peanut b.u.t.ter laced with iron-59, zinc-65, and iodine-131. Red-winged blackbirds and sagebrush lizards were injected with tritium. Yellow-bellied slider turtles were fed calcium-47. Tantalum wires were inserted in the tails of salamanders. The larvae of houseflies contaminated with radioactive zinc were fed to spiders. An aold fielda was subjected to short-term gamma radiation and a stand of hardwood trees was irradiated.4 In the frenzy of ongoing experimentation aimed at better understanding atmospheric fallout, criticality injuries, nuclear battlefield casualties, and s.p.a.ce radiation, the plutonium injections had been more or less forgotten. But in 1967 the old experiment was revived when an AEC official from headquarters placed a call to Berkeleyas Patricia Durbin, the student who had once washed beakers in Joseph Hamiltonas laboratory.5 The AEC official wanted to know more about the comparative toxicity of plutonium and americium following an accident at Rocky Flats, a plant outside Denver, Colorado, which made triggers for thermonuclear bombs. Durbin, by then a respected biophysicist, began looking up scientific reports and eventually found herself reviewing her mentoras old work. Exactly two decades had elapsed since Elmer Allen, the last of the eighteen patients, had been injected.

Durbin was astounded to discover that Allen, code-named CAL-3, was still alive. Then she drove up to Santa Rosa, California and poured through death certificates at the county courthouse. To her amazement she discovered that Albert Stevens, CAL-1, the housepainter from Healdsburg, California, had died in 1966, only one year before her search began. He had lived for more than two decades after being given a so-called lethal dose of plutonium. Durbin wondered what had become of the other patients. aLike a drunk or a gambler, a little bit whets your appet.i.te,a she recalled in an oral history interview.6 Slowly she began pulling the data together. She persuaded officials at the Atomic Energy Commission headquarters to decla.s.sify he 1950 Los Alamos report written by Wright Langham and Samuel Ba.s.sett and retrieved the records of Joseph Hamilton from storage. (Durbin ruefully acknowledged in 1994, after the injections had become the subject of intense publicity and legal action had been taken against the scientists and inst.i.tutions who were responsible, that it might have been better if the Berkeley lab had thrown away Hamiltonas data. It was stupid. It was like Richard Nixon taping in the White House.a)7 In a letter to a hospital administrator dated April 23, 1969, she explained that there had been a furor within the newly formed Atomic Energy Commission when officials learned that some of the plutonium patients had been misdiag-nosed: Most of the patients injected with Pu were studied at other hospitals around the country, and although most were elderly and expected to have short life expectancies at the time of injection, some were misdiagnosed.8 Because of this, there was an understandably great uproar when the civilian A.E.C. took over from the Manhattan Engineer District. As a result, the human data thus obtained was cla.s.sified aSecret,a and so it remained for some years. All efforts to follow up on those persons who had been injected ceased abruptly, and no other human being has been deliberately injected with Pu since.a Unfortunately, the material from three of the four patients injected by Dr. Hamilton has never been made available to anyone.a As she went about her data gathering. Durbin also contacted Wright Langham, who was still working at Los Alamos. Langham was pleased to learn that Durbin was interested in the fate of the plutonium injectees but did not want any active role in a follow-up study. Durbin confided in a letter to her supervisor that Langham was tired of being identified with the experiment and had grown weary of discussing the project at meetings and conferences. aHe is, I believe, distressed by this and other aspects of the study itselfa”particularly the fact the injected people in the HP series [the Rochester patients] were unaware that they were the subjects of an experiment,a she wrote.9 aI believe that in retrospect he wishes there had been some other way to obtain the needed relations.h.i.+ps between Pu excretion and body burden.a Despite his regrets, Langham couldnat pa.s.s up the opportunity to obtain some fraction of the excretion samples from the test subjects. aHe said that if such material were available, the Los Alamos group would be interested in partic.i.p.ating, but that they did not want to be directly responsible nor in direct contact with whomever was actually obtaining samples,a Durbin wrote. aHe summed up his feelings as follows: aIall be delighted to hold your coats while you other fellows fight.a a (Langham did not live long enough to see the results of the study: He died in 1972 in a plane crash in Albuquerque, New Mexico.) Durbin soon learned that besides Elmer Allen, three patients injected with plutonium at the University of Rochesteras Strong Memorial Hospital were also still livinga”homemaker Eda Schultz Charlton, handyman John Mousso, and Janet Stadt, the pain-wracked scleroderma patient. Durbin proposed that a complete follow-up study be undertaken. This meant obtaining additional urine and stool samples from the four survivors and exhuming the bodies of the deceased subjects. In a letter to an official at AEC headquarters, she acknowledged the proposed study was amessy,a but suggested that perhaps the families of the deceased could be offered asomethinga in order to get them to cooperate.10 Durbin wanted to headquarter the project at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, but her boss quickly rejected the idea, fearing athe introduction of exhumed bodies into the politically charged Berkeley atmosphere might even result in picketing of the laboratory by students.a11 Without laboratory support, Durbin could proceed no further, and in December of 1972, she reluctantly turned over copies of the data she had so painstakingly collected to Robert Rowland, the first director of the Center for Human Radiobiology at Argonne National Laboratory, a sprawling complex that had evolved out of the Met Lab and was located some twenty-seven miles southwest of downtown Chicago. The center, which is now defunct, had been set up to do just the type of follow-up studies that Durbin envisioned for the plutonium patients. Formally established by the AEC in 1969, largely through the urging of Robley Evans, the center was devoted to studying individuals who had ingested or been injected with large amounts of radium. Deep within the bowels of the building was a whole-body counter that measured the radium content of both the living and the dead. aWe had cadavers laid out and being deskeletonized one door away from the waiting room to the whole-body counter,a Rowland recalled in a 1995 oral history interview.12 aIf somebody [opened] that door by mistake, we [would be] in deep trouble.a When Robley Evans retired from MIT and moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, he and his a.s.sistant, Mary Margaret Shanahan, were put on the payroll of the Center for Human Radiobiology. Evans and Shanahan then operated a aCHR satellitea from Shanahanas home in Phoenix called the Southwest Field Station of the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology Radioactivity Center. The purpose of the CHR satellite was to track down radium patients and get permission from relatives for exhumations. Evans was very powerful, Rowland recalled, and avery, very intimately involved in ways I donat understand with the Atomic Energy Commission and the Atomic Energy commissioners and the headquarters people at Germantown.a13 Durbin had identified most of the plutonium patients by name when she gave her information to Rowlandas group. She also had secured the cooperation of Christine Waterhouse, the Rochester doctor who had taken care of Eda Schultz Charlton and John Mousso for many years. With Waterhouseas help, Rowland and his staff began making arrangements for follow-up studies of the surviving plutonium patients, to be conducted the following spring at Strong Memorial Hospital, the very hospital where eleven of the eighteen patients had been injected nearly 30 years earlier. Waterhouse later told investigators that she didnat want to tell Charlton and Mousso, both in their seventies by then, of the injections because she thought disclosure might be harmful in terms of their aadvanced age and ill health.a The Chicago scientists wanted a complete collection of the patientsa urine and stool samples; vials of blood for clinical a.n.a.lysis and chromosome research; and complete or partial X rays.14 Soon after receiving Durbinas files, Rowland dashed off a memo to his staff that included the following instructions: aPlease note that outside of CHR we will never use the word plutonium in regard to these cases.15 aThese individuals are of interest to us because they may have received a radioactive material at some timea is the kind of statement to be made, if we need to say anything at all.a Rowland told Department of Energy interviewers in 1995 that he issued those instructions at the behest of James Liverman, who held essentially the same job s.h.i.+elds Warren had once held in what had been renamed the Division of Biomedical and Environmental Research of the AEC. Rowland said he was able to get AEC approval for the follow-up studies only on the conditions that he took the funding from his own budget and that he not tell the patients they had plutonium in their bodies. aThat was Jim Liverman (who) requested that in no un

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