The Plutonium Files Part 11

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.

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