Human Radiation Studies: Remembering the Early Years, Oral History of DR. John W Gofman, M.D., PH.D, Conducted December 20, 1994

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HUMAN RADIATION STUDIES: REMEMBERING THE EARLY YEARS Oral History of United States Department of Energy Office of Human Radiation Experiments

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her Openness Initiative. As part of this initiative, the Department of Energy Iundertook an effort to identie and catalog historical documents on radiation experiments that had used human subjects. The Office of Human Radiation Experiments coordinated the Department’s search for records about these experiments. An enormous volume of historical records has been located. Many of these records were disorganized; often poorly cataloged, if at all; and scattered across the country in holding areas, archives, and records centers. The Department has produced a roadmap to the large universe of pertinent information: Human Radiation Ejcperiments: The Department of Energy Roadmap to the Story and the Records (DOEEH-0445, February 1995). The collected documents are also accesThe passage of time, the state of existing records, and the fact that some decisionmaking processes were never documented in written form, caused the Department to consider other means to supplement the documentary record. In September 1994, the Office of Human Radiation Experiments, in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, began an oral history project to fulfill this goal. The project involved interviewing researchers and others with firsthand knowledge of either the human radiation experimentation that occurred during the Cold War or the institutional context in which such experimentation took place. The purpose of this project was to enrich the documentary record, provide missing information, and allow the researchers an opportunity to provide their perspective. Thirty audiotaped interviews were conducted from September 1994 through January 1995. Interviewees were permitted to review the transcripts of their oral histories. Their comments were incorporated into the final version of the transcript if those comments supplemented, clarified, or corrected the contents of the interThe Department of Energy is grateful to the scientists and researchers who agreed to participate in this project, many of whom were pioneers in the development of

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Oberlin College. Enrollment in Western Reserve Medical School ............2 To University of California. Berkeley to Study Physical Chemistry ..........4 From Research to Laboratory Production of Plutonium ................... 11 Joe Hamilton’s Cavalier Approach to Radiation Medical Treatments With Radioactive Phosphorus (32P) .................. 17 Conflict Between University of California San Francisco and Berkeley ...... 18 Reflections on Ernest Lawrence ..................................... 20 Heart Disease Studies ............................................. 21 AEC Support for Heart Disease Studies ............................... 22 Heparin and Lipoprotein Research With Human Subjects ................. 23 Radiophosphorus Therapy for Polycythemia Vera ....................... 28 Pre- 1 945 Medical Use of High-Dosage Radiation ....................... 29 Attitudes Toward Radiation in AEC’s Biological & Medical Program ....... 34 Division of Biology and Medicine (1962) .......................... 36 Livermore Biomedical Department’s Work on Fallout and Plowshare (1963-65) .............................. 41 The Controversy Over Nuclear-Armed Antiballistic Missiles (1969) ........ 44 Ethical Responsibility to Prove Technology is Safe ...................... 45 Linking Radiation to Breast Cancer (1965) ............................ 46 Testifying Before Congress on Radiation Effects ........................ 49 Gofinan and Tamplin Ostracized .................................... 52 Benefits of Radiation Therapy and Ethics ............................. 52 The Need for Cultural Change at the Department of Energy ............... 59 AEC Responds With Sanctions to Gofman’s Public Dissent (1972) ......... 60 Return to Berkeley ............................................... 62 Reflections on Career Decisions ..................................... 63 The Controversy Over Low-Dosage Harm ............................. 64 Skepticism About the Value of Formal Arms-Control Agreements .......... 68 Motivation During the Manhattan Project ............................. 69 Ethics and Human Radiation Experiments ............................. 70 Conflict With the AEC on Low-Level Effects of Radiation (1 969) .......... 47 Message from John Gofman ...................................... 77

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The opinions expressed by the interviewee are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Department neither endorses nor disagrees with such views. Moreover, the Department of Energy makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of the information provided by the interviewee.

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Setting: December 20, 1994. University of California, San Francisco Interviewers: Karoline Gourley (DOE Office of Human Radiation Experiments) and Loretta Hefner (LBL) Conducted on December 20, 1994 in San Francisco, California, by Loretta Hefier, archivist for the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratoly, and KaroIine Gourley, a researcher for the Oflee of Human Radiation Experiments, US.Department of Energy (DOE). John W. Gofman was selected for the oral history project because of his research at the Universily of California, Berkeley, and his biomedical work at the Lawrence Livermore Radiation Laboratoly (LLRL). The oral history covers Dr. Gofinan's codiscovery of uranium-233, his involvement with isolating the first milligram of plutonium, his work asfounder and director ofthe biomedical program at Lawrence Livermore, and the evolution of his opinions on the eflects of radiation on humans. Dr. G o h a n was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 21, 1918. He received his B.A. in chemistry from Oberlin College (Oberlin, Ohio) in 1939. He received his Ph.D. in NuclearPhysica1 Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. He received his M.D. from the School of Medicine, University of California at San Francisco in 1946. He manied in 1940 and has one grown child. Dr. G o h a n began his career by working for the Plutonium Project as part of the Manhattan Project at the University of California, Berkeley from 1941 to 1943. During that time, he developed two processes for separating plutonium from the uranium and fission products of irradiated fuel. This work, conducted with Dr.Glenn Seaborg, was the precursor to fullscale plutonium production at the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington. Between 1947 and 195 1, Gofinan was a physician in radioisotope therapy at the Donner Clinic, University of California, Berkeley. From 1947 to 1954 Gofman was an Assistant Professor of Medical Physics in the Division of Medical Physics, Department of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1954 this position turned into a full professorship, and in December 1973 it became a Professorship Emeritus, a position he continues to hold today. He was the medical director for the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (Livermore) from 1954 to 1957. From 1963 to 1969 he was an'Associate Director of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and from 1963 to 1966 he was Director/Founder of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory Division of Biology and Medicine. Dr. Gofinan has published many times on such topics as the following: lipoproteins, atherosclerosis, and coronary heart disease, ultracentrifugal discovery and analysis of serum lipoproteins, the relationship of human chromosomes to cancer, the biological and medical effects of ionizing radiation, with particular reference to cancer, leukemia, and genetic diseases, and the lung-cancer hazard of plutonium.

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Setting: December 20. 1994, University of California. San Francisco Interviewers: Karoline Gourley (DOEOffice of Human Radiation Experiments)and Loretta Hefner (LBL) Oberlin College; Enrollment in Western Reserve Medical School Today is December 20,1994, and Karoline Gourley and Lori Hefher are here with Dr. John G o h a n for the purpose of creating Dr. John How is [it] that you first became attracted to science as a profession? I really was a child of the Depression; I would say my first reaction out of high school was, “It would be nice to be able to get a job, any job.” And there were no jobs. I spent the summer after graduating from high school trying to get a job, any job, and couldn’t. What year was that? 1935, and I didn’t have the ambition to be a scientist or anything else. I just tried to stay alive. I then decided maybe since I’d done well in school in mathematics and science, I’d try to [get] into engineering school. Because as far as my dim vision of science was concerned, engineering and science were the same thing. ited my high school and said that they hadn’t had any students from Cleveland, Ohio (where I lived) before and that if the school nominated someone for a scholarship that there was a very good chance of getting it. The math teacher talked to me about it and I thought that was a great opportunity. So I applied for a Rensselaer scholarship and thought no more about it, figuring I was going to get it. [When] anyone asked where I was going to go to school, if I were going to college, fl would answer,] “I’m going to Rensselaer.” Except when April came around, I got a letter saying: T h e y are very happy you’ve been accepted for class, but we’ve run out of scholarships above the level where [your] name came in.” They could have sent me anything, actually, if the tuition were $50: I didn’t have $50 to pay for tuition. So that ended my Rensselaer apThen there was an engineering [school] in Cleveland, Ohio, called Case School of Applied Science.’ I took the exam for a scholarship at Case and tied for fifth, which was good enough to get me a half scholarship, which I also couldn’t afford. I was about to give up, or either go to Ohio State or just not go to college. Then, somebody suggested that there was a school near Cleveland called Oberlin College, and I said, “That’s a music school and I’m not a musivatory.” So I went down and talked to the Dean of Admission, and he said, “You’re a little late applying for a scholarship.” See, it was already summer, but they were very honest and gave me a first-semester scholarship with arrangements called student aid, [by] which you were eligible for half tuition, if you did well. The college later merged with Western Reserve College, forming what is now Case Western Reserve

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Setting: December 20, 1994, University of California, San Francisco Interviewers: Karoline Gourley (DOE Office of Human Radiation Experiments) and Loretta Hefner (LBL) So with the scholarship for the first semester and the possibility of student aid, I went there with a combination of board jobs,* stoking furnaces, and cleaning up snow. I managed to get through the first year, and then things got easier and easier. Because I got regular jobs for my board. The Democratic Administration had a thing called the National Youth Administration [(NYA)] and in college you could get a job and work up to 30 hours a month at 50 cents an hour, so that [provided me] $15 a month, which was a very, very good thing. Roosevelt had put that into that situation. I got one of those NYA jobs, starting my sophomore I had my chemistry the first year. A professor of chemistry named Luke Steiner, a very fine man, a very good chemist, had given me an opportunity to work with him in his lab. Beginning sophomore year, 1 worked in his lab on his research project, which was the study of the absorption of various vapors on porous gels. I worked with him for 3 years (sophomore, junior, and senior year) and I then decided I ought to be a chemist. But for some strange reason, I can’t really explain my senior year in college. I thought about the idea of medicine, especially the idea of doing chemical research in medicine. Dr. Steiner thought that was a good idea. At Christmas vacation, there are a certain number of things that are very irrational in my history. I might as well just tell you. Oh, go right ahead. 1 decided I ought to go to medical school. I went over to Western Reserve Medical School in Cleveland and I went to the front office, the dean’s office. There was a very nice lady, tall lady, Juliette T. Brown, and I introduced myself and said I would [like to] apply for admission in medical school. And she said that the medical school admissions were closed sometime ago. 1just made up my mind this week to apply.” Ordinarily, people should throw someone out of their office when they come in and say these things.It just didn’t occur to me that it was that brash. She said, “Where do you go to college?” I said, “Oberlin.” She said, “what are you majorsaid, ‘Wo.” I would still have to make up some things to be a pre-med, because I knew I hadn’t had courses like Cat Anatomy. It turned out-talk about the quirks of fate-the dean of Western Reserve Medical School, Torald Sollman, was a pharmacologist, and chemistry was said, “quite well at Oberlin”; I had my record with me. She went off, saw the dean, came back, and said, “Dean Sollman will see you.” I went in to see Dean Sollman, who had a stack of journals about this high. (holds his M,palm down, about twofeet oflthefloor) He would * jobs performed in exchange for board (meals)

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Setting: December 20, 1994, University of California, San Francisco Interviewers: Karoline Gourley (DOE Office of Human Radiation Experiments) and Loretta Hefner (LBL) peer over the stack of journals and he appeared to be about 70 years old at the time. He said, “I understand you would like to apply for medical you taken the Medical Aptitude Test?’ I said, “What is that?’ So he told me, “Here, I’ll give you the test right now,” and he did. I handed it in and he promised to let me know. Remember, I didn’t have all the requirements to get in. So about four weeks later they sent me a letter saying I was admitted and that I would have to make up the missing courses, which were Embryology and Cat Anatomy. I couldn’t get both in before the fall semester, but I agreed I would dissect a cat in the summertime at Oberlin, and I did. But I did get into the Embryology3course. I enrolled in Western Reserve Medical School in the fall. I got along fine in medical school that first year, but I could see I was not going to learn much about chemistry in the Biochemistry Division of the medical school. Western Reserve had a new professor of anatomy. The old professor of anatomy had just died a year before, [and he] was fiom a Scottish school that always felt they had to terrorize medical students. But the new professor was a great guy, Normand Hoerr. I got to know him. He had done a lot of research and had a Ph.D. as well as an M.D. In those days, it was pretty exciting doing histochemistrqP on tissues. I talked with him once, and said, “You know, I think I’ll go back and study some more chemistry before completing my medical education.” And he said, “That’s a good idea.” I went to see the dean who had admitted me and gave him my reasons. He said, “it’s a silly idea.” He said, “All the chemistry you need is here.” But I wasn’t convinced of that. To University of California, Berkeley to Study Physical Chemistry GOFMAN: So, I went down and talked to Professor Steiner, [whom] I had worked [for] in a job at Oberlin for three [years]. He said, “There is only one place in the world for the kind of chemistry you’d like to study (physical chemistry), and that’s Berkeley. There is no other place.” It turned out, just in a quirk, that in the two years before, …