A Nation Betrayed: Secret Cold War Experiments Performed on Our Children and Other Innocent People (26 page)

Vanderbilt did their research in accordance with the Atomic Energy Commission and the Public Health Service. We can prove that. We have. Vanderbilt had the records returned to them. They carried on medical monitoring up through the 1960’s. But Vanderbilt has refused to release those records to the victims. Some of us got them. I don’t know how we got that lucky but we did. My mother just simply called and said, ‘Send my records. I’m part of the Vanderbilt Experiment.’ And very interestingly, they had her records all the way back to the date of her birth. We don’t know how they got them. She wasn’t born in Vanderbilt.

In conclusion, I’m a patriotic American and I want that understood today. I did not come here to seek special treatment. I do not have an axe to grind as far as my heritage. I am part Native American. I am part Italian. I am part German, and most recently my cousin did a genealogical study on our family and it appears that I am part African-American. I’m good to go. (Laughter.) So I stand with all of you today and say, yeah, give me my land back in Tennessee. I’m Cherokee. My great grandmother was on the Trail of Tears. My great grandfather, a German, met her there. I’m not sure where all the other stuff came from but it works for me. I’m a patriotic American. I don’t seek any special treatment. But I do feel betrayed and I feel abused by this Committee’s report. They did not do their job. Ladies and gentlemen, I expect accountability from my public servants. Don’t talk to me of government. I am the government. I vote and I can’t wait for November. I expect full disclosure now and in the future. No part of national security was enhanced by keeping mine and my mother’s experiment a secret, but our lives have been changed because of it. My mother now knows the reason why. That as we have gathered our class together and the little old ladies that they were so worried about being upset, you don’t know what it’s like to be in a room with 45 little old ladies who finally found out they were irradiated. Yeah, they were upset. But none of them had to go to the nursing home. They’ve gotten a new lease on life and they’re ready to fight this thing to the bitter end. I want you to know that, and they have mandated their families to fight it long after their dead until it’s resolved. Are they psychologically messed up? No. A lot of them sit around and said, ‘What happened to you? I lost my teeth under the gum line.’ The old joke, the teeth are fine but the gums have to go. Every woman in our study group lost their teeth within five years of the radiation treatment, every one of them. Many of their children, we already know harm was done. Three died with cancer. We know that.

But in our study group, the people my age that have colon cancer and leukemia. I’m one of three that we know of who hasn’t had a major, major physical illness in their life. I expect accountability. Your report that report recommends apology without compensation for experiments where subjects were wronged but not harmed. Ask us if we were harmed. Ask us if we can deal with it. I sat before your august Committee, wonderfully credentialed people. I looked each one of them in the eye and told them what I’m telling you. But I noticed on that Committee there wasn’t an experiment survivor anywhere to be found. That’s an atrocity. I ask that your recommendations show that every committee henceforth have a radiation survivor on that committee, whether they’re credentialed or not they deserve an opportunity, sir. We’re still the government. We are still the government. We are still the government.”

In 1949, the Atomic Energy Commission’s (AEC) Human Use Subcommittee expressly discouraged the use of radioisotopes for research with children or pregnant women; however, that did not prevent experiments being done on both these groups with radioactive material in the years to come.

In the mid-1950s pregnant women at the Argonne Cancer Research Hospital received digitoxin labeled with radioactive carbon-14. The four pregnant women were hospitalized at the Chicago Lying-in Hospital. Three of them had abortions; the fourth delivered an anencephalic baby.
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Normal healthy newborn infants in Iowa, Nebraska, and Tennessee received radioactive Iodine. In 1954, at the University of Tennessee Memphis, seven male infants (one white and six black) between 2 and 3 days old were injected intravenously. The I-131 uptake of the thyroid of the babies was found to lie within the range of values that would be found in hyperthyroid adults.
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In 1954 sixty-five premature infants ranging in birth weight from 2.1 to 5.5 lb were included in a study of the uptake of iodine-131 by the Pediatric Division and the Radioisotope Laboratory of Harper Hospital in Detroit. Seven full-term infants were used for the control group.
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In a study conducted at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in 1959, a whole body counter evaluated the retention of radioactive Iron 59 in sixty-six subjects including one pregnant woman and four children. The study showed the pregnant woman absorbed larger amounts of iron.
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Twenty-eight infants from the nursery at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine ingested radioactive iodine through a gastric tube in 1960.
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In 1963, twenty-five infants at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, who were less than 36 hours old, had radioiodine administered either orally or by intramuscular injection. This study showed that I-131 was taken up by the thyroid at a higher level and more rapidly, when administered by injection rather then ingestion.
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Three girls and three boys were among the twenty-six normal people studied at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in 1960 with iodine-131. This study showed that approximately 20 percent of the radioactive iodine was taken up by the thyroid gland.
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In a study conducted in 1963 by a graduate student at the University of Rochester to investigate the human body’s metabolism of radioiodine found in dairy products, younger age groups were specifically chosen, since the majority of known research had been conducted on adults. The people ranged in age from six years to 50 years, seven were less than 21 years old. The research sought to determine if iodine found in milk was transferred to the thyroid in the same quantities as the inorganic iodide commonly used in medical studies. Cornell’s University’s Department of Veterinary Medicine provided the milk from a cow fed iodine-131. All those who were part of this experiment were put on an iodine restricted diet prior to the study and then were fed the radioactive milk for a minimum of 14 days. One of the children in this study subsequently developed thyroid carcinoma.
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The Iodine 131 Experiment in Alaska
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Pregnant and lactating women were also a part of this Alaskan study. In 1956 and again 1957, the U.S. Air Force’s Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory conducted a study of the role of the thyroid gland in acclimatizing humans to cold using iodine 131. Like the case of the Marshallese, this study is another instance in which research conducted on populations that were unfamiliar at the time with modern American medicine, posed special ethical problems and was therefore of interest to the Advisory Committee. The study involved 200 administrations of I-131 to 120 subjects: 19 Caucasians, 84 Eskimos, and 17 Indians. Animal studies had suggested the thyroid gland might play a crucial role in adaptation to extreme cold. The results of the study were published in 1957 as an Air Force technical report by the principal investigator, Dr. Kaare Rodahl, M.D., a Norwegian scientist hired by the U.S. Air Force for his expertise in arctic medicine. Many observational studies of these Alaska Natives were carried out by a variety of researchers in the 1950s and 1960s. Most of these did not administer radiation to the natives, but only measured what had already accumulated in their bodies from fallout. The thyroid study discussed here however, differed in that it actively administered radionuclides to natives, raising more direct questions of consent, risk, and subject selection. The Alaskan I-131 experiment also offered subjects no prospect of medical benefit.

The Advisory Committee did not conduct its own on-site investigation of the Alaskan experiments. Instead, they relied on published materials (primarily Rodahl’s 1957 report on the study, “Thyroid Activity in Man Exposed to Cold “) as well as testimony by representatives of the Inuit villages of the North Slope of Alaska where the research was conducted.

In 1994 Dr. Rodahl recalled that the base commander at the Arctic Aero-medical Laboratory approved the study, and headquarters in Washington knew of the experiment. Participants in the study were asked to swallow a capsule containing a tracer dose of radioiodine. Measurements were then made of thyroid activity using a scintillation counter and samples taken of blood, urine, and saliva. The study’s overall conclusion was that, “The thyroid does not play any significant role in human acclimatization to the arctic environment when the cold stress is no greater than what is normally encountered by soldiers engaged in usual arctic service or by Alaskan Eskimos or Indians in the course of their normal life or activities.”

Dr. Rodahl told the IOM/NRC Committee that follow-up was left to the Alaska Native Service, which was already aware of a goiter problem in these communities. Alaska natives, testifying in 1994 before the IOM/NRC committee could not recall any follow-up visits by physicians.

Risk

The principal investigator, Dr. Rodahl, took a one-week course on the proper handling and administration to humans of iodine 131, and then instructed the other physicians who would be working in the field. In terms of dosage and risk, the experiment was not significantly different from tracer studies conducted in the continental United States with two exceptions. First, some subjects were used more than once. Several Alaska Native subjects reported they received as many as three doses.

Second, the subjects included women who were pregnant or lactating. Although the AEC discouraged the non-therapeutic use of radioisotopes in pregnant women, such research was still conducted. What sets the Alaska experiment apart from other studies conducted on pregnant and lactating women is that this experiment was not investigating a research question about an aspect of pregnancy or lactation.

Disclosure and Consent

This experiment offered no prospect of medical benefit to subjects. If the subjects in this experiment did not understand and agree to this instrumental use of their bodies, then they were merely used as a means to the ends of the investigators and the Air Force. The Committee found no documents from the time of the experiment that bore on what, if anything, the subjects were told, and whether consent was obtained. There are also no documents bearing on whether the Air Force provided the researchers with guidelines on the use of human subjects or requirements for obtaining consent.

The only available evidence comes from personal recollections of the principal investigator and a few of the former subjects. Dr. Rodahl recalled in 1994 that he obtained white volunteers through their military commanders and Indian and Eskimo volunteers through the village elders. When a military volunteer came before him he explained in the subject’s native tongue (English), the purpose of the study and what a subject would do. He then gave the person the opportunity to decline to participate. When visiting the villages, the physicians could not communicate directly in the native language. They would find an English-speaking village elder to explain the purpose of the study. The elder would then find people to serve as subjects. What communication occurred between the village elder and the prospective subjects is not known. Dr. Rodahl also reported that he did not use the term radiation in his explanation to the English-speaking village elders who then communicated with others in the villages. Interviews in 1994 by the IOM/NRC committee indicated that there is no word for radiation in the native languages.

One Alaska Native subject interviewed by the IOM/NRC committee in 1994 recalled that at the time he worked in a hospital, spoke English, and did know about “radiation. “He could not recall any use of the term in the study. In at least one Arctic Village, there were no English speakers. Subjects from this village testified that they thought they were taking a substance that would improve their own health, and that they would not have participated in the study if they had known it required them to take a radioactive tracer.

The available evidence suggests that the leaders may not have understood; and thus were not in a position to communicate to the subjects that the experiment was non-therapeutic, that it had a military purpose, or that it involved exposure to low doses of radiation. A significant cultural barrier exacerbated the ethical difficulties posed by the language barrier. The Indian and Eskimo villages had little exposure to modern medicine. One village, Point Lay, is described in Rodahl’s 1957 report as “relatively little affected” by the modern world. There is a strong likelihood that there was no appreciation for the difference between treatment of a patient and research unrelated to any illness of the subject.

The danger of exploitation was further heightened by the trusting relationship that developed between the native Alaskans and the field researchers. In part, this trust was due to the desire for medical care. In at least one village, harsh conditions may have increased the need for outside assistance. Rodahl’s report states that Point Lay had suffered from semi starvation the previous year. Dr. Pierce testified to the Advisory Committee, “In the mid-1950s, doctor visits to native villages were quite scarce.” Dr. Rodahl said when his plane landed the villagers would come running to meet him, and the other physicians who came with him and the villagers would immediately want their ailments treated. He said the physicians treated them because they were medical men. He also said, “The natives trusted them and they trusted the natives.” Testimony before the IOM/NRC committee included the recollection of one participant that he had been paid $10 for the study. In other testimony, it appears some subjects may have believed there was an implicit quid pro quo, trading medical treatment for participation.