Human Radiation Studies: Remembering the Early Years, Oral History of Biochemist Waldo E Cohn, PH.D, Conducted January 18, 1995

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HUMAN RADIATION STUDIES: REMEMBERING THE EARLY YEARS Oral History of Biochemist 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 As part of this initiative, the Department of Energy Iundertook an effort to identifl and catalog historical documents on radiation experiments that had used human subjects.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 Experiments: The Department of Energy Roadmap to the Story and the Recorck (DOJYEH-0445, February 1995). The collected documents are also accessible through the Internet World Wide Web under http ://www. ohre.doe.gov. The 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 Ofice 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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Recruited for the Metallurgical Laboratory (1943) ........................ 2 Isolating Fission Products at Wartime Oak Ridge ........................ 5 for Ph.D. Research and Cancer Therapy ................................ 8 Push to Find Commercial Uses for Crocker Lab’s Radioisotopes (1940s) Calculating the Toxic Effects of Inhaled Radioisotopes (Mid-1940s) ........ 11 Oak Ridge Graphite Reactor Becomes a Postwar Source of Radioisotopes .... 12 General Groves’s Relations With the Scientists ......................... 14 Transfer to the Oak Ridge Biology Division (1947) ...................... 16 Adherence to Radiation Standards ................................... 17 Research on Nucleic Acids ......................................... 22 Work With Aebersold to Create the Isotopes Distribution Committee (1946) . . 13 Researcher Knowledge of Radiological Hazard and Informed Consent ....... 21 Use of Radioactive Isotopes Assessed in Context ....................... 26 Vanderbilt University Studies of Pregnant Women No Human Subjects Used by Oak Ridge Biology Division ................ 28 Creating the Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra (1944) .................... 29 With Radioactive Iron (1945-49) ................................. 27 Nuclear Energy Policy and Public Opinion ............................ 33

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The opinions expressed by the intervieweeare his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Department neither endorses nor disagreeswith 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: January 18,1995, Oak Ridge, Tennessee Interviewers: Thomas Fisher, Jr. and Michael Yuffee ORAL HISTORY OF BIOCHEMIST WALDO E.COHN, Ph.D. Conducted on January 18, 1995, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, by Thomas Fisher, Jr. ment of Energy, WaldoE. Cohn was selectedfor the oral histov project becme of his early research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he investigated the radiotoxicity of fision products; his role as the architect of this c0unlr-y 's postwar isotopeproduction and distributionpolicy; and his work developing a technique-ion-exchge chromatogqhy-that hasproved invaluable in the stu& of nucleic acids imd other areas. The oral historyprimarily covers Dr. Cohn 's early involvement with the Manhattan Project, including his work as the Biochemistry Group leader at the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory and his tenure at Oak Ridge National Laborat o q where he was a senior biochemist in the Biology Division. Dr. Cohn was born in San Francisco, California, on June 28, 1910. He received his B.S. in 1931, his M.S. in Chemistry in 1932, and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1938, all from the University of California, Berkeley. His graduate research involved the use of cyclotronproduced radioisotopes, and was thus among the fust investigations in the U.S. to use these materials as tracers in uncovering metabolic and physiological processes. He has been mamied twice and has two children. Dr. Cohn began his career as a teaching and research assistant in Biochemistry at Berkeley (1937-39). From 1939to 1942, Dr. Cohn continued his research at Harvard Medical School. In 1942, Dr. Cohn was appointed Section Chief, Chemistry Division, of the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago, where he stayed one year before moving to Oak Ridge. In 1947, Dr.Cohn became Senior Chemist and Group Leader of the Biology Division at Oak Ridge, a position he held until his retirement in 1975. While at Oak Ridge, Dr.Cohn has held the following positions: 1955 to 1956-Fulbright Scholar, Cambridge University; 1955 to 1956, 1962 to 19634uggenheim Fellow; 1959 to 196&Treasurer, American Society of Biological Chemists; 1963-Visiting Professor, Institut de Bioiogie, Paris, France; 1965 to 1976--Secretary, Commission on Biochemical Nomenclature, International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistsfinternational Union of Biochemists; 1965 to 1976-Director, Office of Biochemical Nomenclature, National Academy of 1966-Visiting Professor, Rockefeller University, New York, New York. Dr. Cohn has published many times on artificial radioisotopes in biological systems; the isolation of individual fission-product species; and, especially, the development of a techniqu-lution chromatography on ion exchangers-that has proved invaluable in the study of nucleic acids. The techniques invented by Dr. Cohn in this field are now in use in the vast majority of biochemical and chemical laboratories and in chemical manufacture.

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Setting: January 18,1995, Oak Ridge, Tennessee Interviewers: Thomas Fisher, Jr. and Michael Yuffee (DOE Office of Human Radiation Experiments) Recruited for the Metallurgical Laboratory (1943) My name is Michael Yuffee. I work for the Department of Energy, in the Office of Human Radiation Experiments. I’m here with Tom Fisher, also from the Office of Human Radiation Experiments. We’re at the home of Waldo Cohn in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. It is January 18, 1995. Dr. Cohn, I was wondering if we could start by going through a little bit of your background, your education, and where you’re from to get us started, before we start talking about your days in the pioneering age of I’m a graduate of University of California, Berkeley. I have a Master’s [(M.S.) in Chemistry] and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry (1938). In 1939, I went to Harvard Medical School on a postdoctoral fellowship. I spent almost four years there, in the Huntington Memorial Laboratories of the Harvard Medical School and as a tutor in the Department of Biochemical Sciences at Harvard University. While I was there, I was solicited to join what turned out to be the Manhattan Project.’ I have to back up a minute and say that my Ph.D. thesis was done with artificial radioactive isotopes from [Ernest 0.1 Lawrence’s cyclotronzat Berkeley. I was one of the few people in the country at that time that had experience with artificial radioactive isotopes as tracers’ in biochemical and biological experiments.That’s the reason I was sought out while I was still at Harvard and asked to join the [Manhattan] Project. They didn’t tell me what the project was all about, except that my expertise was needed. What year was that? In late 1942. In 1943, I went to Chicago and joined the Metallurgical Laboratory4at the University [of Chicago], which was the code name for the plutonium project under Arthur Compton. That project was to investigate the biological and biochemical hazards that might be induced bq the fission products that would result from a chain reactor, if one could ever be built. Of course, this is all a prelude to producing plutonium for an atomic bomb-again, ifit could be made. So, I was more or less in charge of what I called radiobiological aspects of the plutonium project. At this point in time, you had already been aware of the first nuclear I the U.S. Government’s secret project, launched December 28, 1942 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Manhattan Engineer District, to develop the atomic bomb. Headquartered in Washington, the Manhattan Project was the Office of Scientific Research and Development Section on Uranium and was codenamed S-1 (Section One of the Office of Scientific Research and Development). an accelerator in which particles move in spiral paths in a constant magnetic field radioactive tags on biomoleculesused to study a biological, chemical, or physical system “Met Lab,” the laboratory set up at the University of Chicago during World War I1 to lead the secret research and development of controlled nuclear fission under the Manhattan Project Led by physicist Enrico Fermi, Met Lab researchers had produced the first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction on December 2, 1942. Operating initially at one-half watt, it achieved 200 watts ten days later.

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Setting: January 18, 1995, Oak Ridge, Tennessee Interviewers: Thomas Fisher, Jr. and Michael Yuffee (DOEOffice of Human Radiation Experiments) COHN: I became aware of it when I joined the project in Chicago, somewhere about February 1, 1943. I was not told, when they were soliciting me to join the project, what it was all about, but when I arrived there my supervisor told me all about it. So, [in] one day, I learned the whole basis of the thing-uranium-23 5,6 plutonium-239,’ and so forth. How did you originally become interested in biochemistry and chemistry? Was it just an interest you developed while you were in school? I drifted. I was pretty good at chemistry and physics in high school. When I went to college, my advisor there saw four years of French on But, when I went home, my father said, “You march right back there and tell them that you will major in Chemistry!” So I became a chemist more [or] less by drifting. Who made the initial overtures to you about the joining the Met Lab? People that I had been associated with [at] Berkeley around the cyclobrother and who was a physician; maybe some others). They were the first ones [whom] the heads of the project sought out. The reason they were sought out was that the head of the whole biological and medical wing of the Manhattan Project at that time was Robert Stone, who was professor of Radiology at the University of California [Medical School]. He knew those people, and they knew of me, and they didn’t want to be separated from what they were doing because they were all involved with Lawrence’s part of the Manhattan Project, so they said, “Why don’t we get this guy Cohn at Harvard?’ The upshot of it was that James Bryant Conant, who was the head of the Office of Scientific Research and De~elopment,~wrote a letter to James Bryant Conant, President of Harvard University, asking whether Waldo Cohn, working as a postdoc at the Harvard Medical School, could be spared. My boss asked me if I could [be] spared for an important war z35Uaccounts for just 0.7 percent of all natural uranium; it has 143 neutrons in its nucleus, compared with 146 neutrons in the more abundant uranium-238. The slight difference in atomic weight between the 235U and u8U isotopes figured greatly in nuclear physics during the 1930s and 1940s. Uranium-235 could fission with slow neutrons, making a chain reaction possible. What was unknown was whether it could also fission with fast neutrons in a chain-reacting manner, to allow scientists to build an atomic bomb. See F.G. Gosling, The Manhuttun Project: Making the Atomic Bomb (DOE/HR-0096), September 1994. Chemist Glenn T. Seaborg had identified plutonium in February 1941, “By May he had proven that plutonium-239 was 1.7 times as likely as uranium-235 to fission. This finding made the Fermi-Szilard experiment more important than ever as it suggested the possibility of producing large amounts of the fissionable plutonium in a uranium pile using plentiful uranium-238 and then separating it chemically. Surely this would be less expensive and simpler than building isotope-separation plants.“ Source: established by an executive order June 28, 194 1-six days after German troops invaded the Soviet Union. The OSRD’s director reported directly to the President and could invoke the prestige of the White House when dealing with other Federal agencies. The National Defense Research Committee, at the time headed by Harvard President James Conant, became an advisory body responsible for making research and development recommendations to the OSRD.

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Setting: January 18, 1995, Oak Ridge, Tennessee Interviewers Thomas Fisher, Jr. and Michael Yuffee (DOEOffice of Human Radiation Experiments) project, and I said, “Whatever you think.” He told James Bryant Conant, President of Harvard, who wrote to James Bryant Conant, the head of OSRD, and said, “Yes, Waldo Cohn could be spared!” FISHER: Remarkably simple process. Yes, I thought that would amuse you, that [Conant] was wearing two A lot of people wore two hats back in those days. So, anyway, my boss didn’t want me to leave, but he figured the war project was more important. I have a letter from the Harvard Board of Trustees giving me leave of absence for the war effort in 1942, but it wasn’t until [February] 1943 that I actually joined. When you got to Chicago and to the Met Lab, what research did you do in terms of trying to find out biologicalCOHN: -The first thing was to get our hands on some fission products, because this was going to be a laboratory investigation. I was a laboratory person; I wasn’t just going around interviewing people. I had to set up a laboratory, and then, hopefully, we could get some fission products to experiment with and put them into animals and see how dangerous they What type of research were you doing with the animals in terms of trying to figure out biological and biochemical hazards? This was all [only] planned, because there wasn’t a going reactor. There was no plutonium; there were no fission products. This was all on paper. The first thing I had to do was set up a laboratory and be prepared for when there would be fission products to work [with]. In the meantime, the project as a whole was devoted to building the graphite reactor at Oak Ridge[, Tennessee]. I guess it was still in the process of being built The [plan] was that each one of us at Chicago would double the size of our group, fiom the top to the bottom, and half would go to Oak Ridge, when the reactor would be going, and half would remain at Chicago. I elected to go to Oak Ridge, where we would actually prepare the fission products and send them back to the half I would leave at Chicago, [where] they would do the biological experimentation. So, I became a …