An Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) official 44 years ago flatly denied the existence of government radiation experiments on retarded children, such as those conducted by Harvard researchers, according to documents made public yesterday.
That release comes in the wake of a May report by the Fernald state School which said that Harvard and MIT researchers conducted such experiments on dozens of retarded students from the 1940s to the 1960s.
"The AEC not only does not sponsor this particular project but it also has never sponsored a medical research project where human beings are used for experimental purposes," wrote AEC spokesperson Shelby Thompson in a 1950 letter.
The letter was addressed to then Associated Press General Manager Frank Starzel in reaction to an AP story about 12 Arizona prisoners volunteering for medical experiments.
The documents were released by the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, formed by President Clinton after it was discovered that students at various state schools were unwittingly subjected to radiation experiments.
Jonathan Moreno, an investigator for the committee, said the out-and-out denial is the most brazen the committee has yet encountered.
Many other radiation research violations have recently come to light. At the Wrentham State School in Massachusetts in 1961, a Harvard Medical School assistant professor and a Harvard researcher fed "mentally defective" children aged one to 11 small doses of radioactive iodine, according to the Fernald report.
Moreno offered a few tentative explanations for Thompson's 1950 statement.
"Either he was misinformed or he was simply covering up," said Moreno at the committee meeting where the letter was released.
Thompson also might not have been aware of the experiments, Moreno said.
"We don't know who knew what," Moreno said.
But no matter who knew about the experiments, the May report issued by Fernald leaves no doubt that such tests occurred, at least in Massachusetts.
Another document, also released yesterday, suggested that the AEC wanted to keep the experiments quiet.
"It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans and might have adverse effect on public opinion or result in legal suits," reads a 1947 memo by AEC Col. O.G. Haywood Jr.
Frederick M. Misilo Jr., chair of the state Task Force to Review Human Subject Research, said the nutrition studies conducted at Fernald in the 1940s and 1950s caused "no significant health effects" to the tests' subjects.
