In Case We Never Heard

 

1944–1956: Radioactive nutrition experiments on retarded children by Harvard and MIT

https://ahrp.org/1944-1956-radioactive-nutrition-experiments-conducted-by-harvard-and-mit-on-disabled-children/

Developmentally disabled children at the Fernald State School and a state School in Waltham, Massachusetts were subjected to radioactive nutrition experiments sponsored by the AEC conducted by Harvard University and MIT researchers. The children were fed Quaker Oats breakfast cereal containing radioactive tracers to test absorption of plant minerals and calcium. Parents were never informed that radioactive elements were involved in the tests.

“In the name of science, members of the club would eat cereal mixed with radioactive milk for breakfast or digest a series of iron supplements that gave them the radiation-equivalent of at least 50 chest X-rays. From 1946 to 1956, scores of retarded teen-agers consumed radioactive food to help the researchers better understand the human digestive process.”

“There is absolutely no ground for caution regarding the quantities of radioactive substances which we would use in our experiments,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology biochemist Robert S. Harris assured Fernald’s superintendent in a letter proposing the research in December 1945. At least some consent forms sent home to parents or guardians do not mention radiation.”

“Based on figures in an unpublished report on the project, the children’s spleens were exposed to between 544 and 1,024 millirems of radiation over the course of seven meals. By comparison, the typical American receives about 300 millirems of radiation from natural sources each year.”

“The experiments at the Fernald School, which almost certainly would not be permitted today, are one of the darker corners of Massachusetts’ atomic legacy. Along with pioneering the field of nuclear medicine, some of the state’s leading academic institutions and hospitals also subjected the terminally ill, the elderly and others to radiation doses that are considered unsafe today, often with no possible benefit to the test subjects.”