Article on of Oak Ridge, Monkeys, Mice and Men and the Syndrome Sent to P L Johnson

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The dimly - lit hz ll way xeaved left and right like a maze. Clutching i3Jayne1s sr,all hand, Ii;ary Sue Sexton fell instep behind the white - coated Sec hn ici zn. They passed by a control p zn eland through a wrought = iron g zte into the c haber. The room was dark except for a brill iz nt halo over an empty,alun i numbed. !?.,;ayne clin3ered over a nylon net sur rom ding the bed a d settled into the trough - shaped berth. lbiary Sue ex ch m ged rez s su ring smiles 2nd a hesitant x ave with her son. Then she turned and stepped back out to x a it in the hz l1. Kay Sue coi il dn lt see the eight cones pointing to v z rd Dxayne fr oz the shadows, bilt she could hear as light ii Km as the shielding was removed ad the tel2therapy machines begu ! bathing him in what one o f the d oct crs later called Ita sea of radiation.11 Urlhnown t o I42ry Sue Sex tc n,her son \+as serving as part of a government experiment: lie cas helping to find the par x net ers of the radiation sickness Syn drc me - - precisely how large a dose it takes to case a person to lose his appetite,get nauseous and vomit, BEST COPY AVAILABLE

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1975 i n two specially - designed c haber s at the Institute for I Ju clear Studies j nO & Ridge, Tenn. The rac iz tion tr cz tn ents begs as a leeS tih zte attempt to improve cancer therapy,but they evolved into Freedom of Information Act, indicate that the treatments were of little, if any, benefit to the patients. on man ' s sensitivity tora diet ion. Yet,they continued be ce use An in ds had been the first to breach the galaxy.bgs 2nd chimp zn zee s and monkeys were net zm or p hosed into avian c rez ture s hurtling through the stratos2here a top rockets. Down below,scientists - vere wrestling with En answered quest i cr ! , ~T about how hun zn beings would stad up to the Syndrome. Nausea ar?d vomiting might be maa Ee able ailments on the ground,butto a-i astronaut wearing an oxygen mask, they Flares were especially worrisome. Astronomers knew that so1aii flares tend to occur in eleven - year cycles ] but exact l rore casts are hpc ssi ble, Though the phencinenon generally lasts less than an hour, a so lz r flare produces enormous amounts of radiation - - easily enough t o kill an astronaut unprotected by the layers of our plz ne tls atmosphere, Shielding would have provided some p L - otec tion,but the extra weight costs money and creates extra pro ble rn s, and researchers were unsure .a but just how much shielding was needed. A t Brooks Air Force Base in Texas, studies OR' primates were already underway before the space program ro ally got off the

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doses of radiation after dropping their loads. liiould they be able to cmp let e their flights and return their aircraft tG bzse before what radiation did to rhesus monkeys 2nd whzt it didto men. I n one report they concluded, " that the rh esc s monkey is biologically more tolerant of radiation than is man. " h'ard data on human radio sensitivity was vital to HAS A. But who would volunteer to be exposed to potentially lethal doses of radiation ? The monkeys h2d hzd no choice o I n Oak Ridge,Tenn.,a pathologist nae d Clarence C. Lushbaugh agreed to search for s one of the answers I\i.\SA i%lated. nowzdays. It used to be known zsthe "Atomic City. " This v:as the town created byu ncl e- Sam to produce fuel for theI4x hatta n Project rs A-bombs during ltlorld k/ar Two. Hidden in hollows 2.Ld rolling hills of black o&, massive factories for producing bomb-grade uranium rose up within a perimeter of total military security. The limestone ridges along the snaking Clinch River offered natur zl protection from Fower from the Tennessee Valley Authority was in plentiful The govern vent paid local residents $2.6 million for 58,800 acres of lend ad agreed to care for the 65 cemeteries within the tract.Construction began i n November 1942. t / ithin two years, - the population of the to xn peaked at 75,000. Two years after the war, the newly - created Atomic S ne rgy Cor mission tookover civilian control

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1955 2nd i t was 1959 befoi - ethe first runic i321 Covernrnent vias fon ned. Today Oak Rid gels bi-ozd main avenues are still lined with Amy barracks converted 2nd refurbished as apartment buildings. The "do;mtoim" area is a modern shopping center. The denizens of the " Energy Capital " area curious mix of rural - bred hill people 2nd scientists and technicians from around the world. One out of every 35 Oak Ridge rs holds a Ph.D. degree - - the highest per capita ratio in the nation. Clarence Lushbzugh arrived in 1963. A short,balding man with a coin bati ve personality, Lushbaugh likes to say he "grew upin the gutters " of Cincinnati where his rime, Clarence, trv:as a fighting now csll him t1TLsh" but his feisty attitude hasn ' t mellowed mchin The nan s plate behind his desk says H.S.O.B.1.C--Read SonEducated at the University of Chicago where he received his 1963 h e moved t o rural Tennessee and joined the staff of the Institute " I n Los A1mos, " he explains, "we had plenty of r sdio isotopes .and plenty of machinery,but we didn ' t have a whole lot of sick people because it was a rather young population. " Oak Ridge offered the szm

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grateful for free in ed ical attention at the clinic. Lushtaugh headed The Ozk Ridge Institute had a mandate from the Atomic Znergy Cor mission - - which was then the g over c ment agency charged with pro pot ing nuclear energy - - to conduct research into the " beneficial applications of radiation. " Some sign if i cmt achievements did come outof Oak Ridge ' s clinic,including the development of a cobalt - 6 0 (c-60) tele therapy machine which served as a prototype for others now used in cancer therapy athos pit elsa cro s s- ..t he country. Lush bagh was tea ned with.emin zn t hematologist kul d tz king care of persons with r-aklation injuries, " Lushbaugh I was the world-rekac:;;in expert a i trying to figdre out what went wrong at the autopsy table. So -de v:ere a pretty gcod rn x ri age, " If someone was acute ly i rr2d i2t ed in an accident, no matter \.:hen o r where, Dr. Andrews was called into give them sed ical at tent loz. His hunched figure was un mist z keble - - he ii as afflicted with extreme curvature of the spine.And rex s wzs a con passionate and competent attendant to his patients,but whenever his medical ministrations seven people killed outright in radiation accidents in the United States,he says he per fo med autopsies on five. Shortly after his arrival in Oak Ridge, Lushbaugh won a NASA contract to conduct a retrospective analysis of the effects of radiation : a hunt for the point where the Syndrome symptoms appear. He looked for clues in the medical charts of cancer patients Mho had been tree ted with radiotherapy. By the end o f 1964, tush ba ugh had compiled data on more than 3,000 patients treated at k3differ e it

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i3ut the retrospective analysis had its limitations. ' h e detailed notes on their reactions in the systematic nafirier of a the ideal place for the study ad Lush bac gh was the ideal choice to conduct it. By carefully monitoring p z ti ents during ad after radio the rz pyatt he clinic, Tuushbaugh 2nd his as soci zte s could be o n the lockout for Syndrome symptoms ad corre lzt e them with the exact dose of radiation. " 3e case of expanding prog rms in nucl ez r energy 2nd space ever for datz derived directly by observation of mzn's reaction rather thm assumed from m hal studies. " In 1960, the Oak Ridge clinic hz d begun cae - at inga therapy chaz ber known a s hiZTBI--Nedium E-uposure Total aody Ir radiator.Built in a special wFng of the tiny clinic, 1.53T.51 was designed for experiments testing spray irradiation 2s a treatment for blood cancers,part of applications of radiation. " The technique of spray irradiation was already considered out -,.hen the experiments beg=. Prior to the Second 'dorld v/ar, researchers at Sloan - Kettering Cancer In skit ute in Rew York, discovered that by spraying aK mori al leukemia victim ' s total body with .to depress the bone marrow a d kill cancerous blood cells forming there. X-rays, the radiation could be used Then, during the war, scientists found that injections of radio phosphorous and several n it Fog en must z rds could achieve essentially the s me results

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bys ' a ip ler and better tech nip es.lt hsh b auch agrees. "The he naio1oEist.sbc san using these nitrogen mustards, " he says, " end so they began hogging all these i hole dam field of radiologists are not going to put up with that. So they cane along with a system for doing the szme thin zsa s the n it To gen mustards,but you don ' t have to hold the guy dGwn ad stick ? hat they c me along with at Oz k Ridge was I.iZ?'BI, and a new twist in the technique of spray irradiation.Doctors at Slo a - Kettering be more flexible than a bulky machine. ? Luzhbaugh ex plein s it this way: " See,with an X-ray tube, you ' d put the person on the floor in the fetal position with his knees drawn up and you'd zap him from the right side with an X-ray mzchine End then you ' d flip him over and irradiate him from the other side. " The I4STBI facility was a quant un imprcvernent. The doctors could zap their patients in a specially - designed room with doses ranging from 1.8 rad s per hour (1.8r) t o 300 rad s per hour(3OOr). These are ext rei rely high doses - - an ordinary chest X-ray is about one - tenth of a rad - - but the exposures were 2nd are considered therapeutic in some The government ' s handbook for the.holocaust, The Effects of probability of survival is good at the lower end of the range,but poor at the upper end. The initial symptoms are similar to those common in radiation sic g ness...the larger the dose,the sooner will

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The trez t ment of 1eukcrr.ia patients in I.;,'T31 bcGan a s coon as the fsc ili ty was opera tio cal. Dr. auld Andr cw s directed the clinical hematology staff. L ssh ba ugh non i to red the cancer p z ti ents for signs ofthe Syndrome. - As part of the federally - funded Oak Ridge Associated Universities - - a consortium of 50 colleges and universities throughout the South - - the clinic had a rezdy-mzde network to draw patients from.. Doctors in the rural South re gul.gly referred csn cer patients to Oak Ridge. i.;ncnt them were people suffering from Hodgkin ' s disease chronic Ru bra Ve ra,i dio path ic th ronbo cyth em ia , lymph os arc on a and lppho s. a r coin a cell leuk e miz. - The chronic patients tended to receive ' Ither ~ py tl in the NET BIc haber overlong periods of the. Sone ofthe more critic d. p z t lent s were exposed to nz s sive doses of radiation as part of bone marrow transplant experiments - - they wel-e ideal subjects to monitor I t was June of 1965 and the humid air was just hinting at the oppressive Tennessee summer &head when three - yeir - old beyne Sexton first took sick. The auburn - haired boy just w z snl this usual self.First - born child of Tahon 2nd Nary Sue Sexton, Dwayne had his daddy ' s dimpled chin,his not her ls wide, brown eyes ad enough .energy to keep them both busy. That summer he changed. lfDwayne just wanted to s it or lay down," hls mother remembers, was ti red runThey. visited the f mily doctor who diagnosed Dwsyne as anemic