"Clearly the ethics of medical experiments havebeen changing in the last 50 years. What isregarded as adequate permission is ratherdifferent," Wilson said. "People in jails werecommonly used. That was a stable population. Youcould go back every week and they would be there.The program of the Atomic Energy Commission andfood and drug companies did this...it wasstandard."
According to a report in the Boston Herald, Dr.Robert S. Stone of the University of CaliforniaMedical School, a scientist working with Warren,proposed that he and Warren use prisoners as testsubjects for their atomic-plane project, addingthat convicts are "likely to remain in one placewhere they can be observed for a great years."
Whittemore said people in the 1940s and 1950swere generally unaware of the dangers posed byradiation. "It was an uphill battle trying toconvince people to become safe. Things thatnowadays are just a part of our culture back thenwere not," Whittemore said.
Wilson is looking for answers. He said hebelieves there is a cover-up underway at theEnergy Department and thinks it will be yearsbefore the truth about the experiments is known.
"I've gotten no information about this and I'vebeen trying. So far, every lab director [at theEnergy Department] has been told to look forexperiments where radiation might have been used.But no lab director knows what happened 30 yearsago offhand. At the bottom of someone's file is awhole lot of stuff that no one's sorted through tofind out what it all means."
"I believe in trying to find out what this isall about. And no one knows. The Department ofEnergy has done something typical of ourgovernment," Wilson said. "It's a grandstand playby the head who doesn't know beans about scienceand who says we're now releasing things that weresecret before. It's a real cover-us with givingpeople too much information so that people cannotfind the real information."
Whittemore said he too has been stymied by whathe calls the Energy Department's culture ofsecrecy."
"The Energy Department took on a military tonein terms of secrecy," he said. "Just walking intothe building was different than any other buildingin Washington. The guards look like marines, notcustodians with walkie talkies."
Dr. James Adelstein, executive directorfor academic programs at Harvard Medical School,said the use of radioactive tracers like those inthe Fernald experiments has led to many majoradvances in medical knowledge. He said theisotopes used in the experiments were a major toolof clinical investigation at the time.
Adelstein, who has reviewed the Fernaldstudies, said he thinks Benda is the only Harvardlink to the experiments.
The calcium and iron experiments were publishedin the Journal of Nutrition in 1950 and 1954.
Medical School Dean Daniel C. Tosteson '44 andVice President and General Counsel Margaret H.Marshall were both out of town yesterday and couldnot be reached for comment.