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I placed this telephone call to Dr. LeRoy to inquire about his examination of the hospital chart on the first Chicago patient (CHI-1). Dr. LeRoy said that he had inspected the chart and found nothing relevant to the issue of disclosure to patients or injection of the patient.I inquired whether w e would be free to look at the charts ourselves. Dr. LeRoy responded that as far as h e was concerned we could inspect the charts.His tone of voice implied that our inspection of the charts would be superfluous.Since there are no immediate plans for such examination of the charts,the matter was not pursued and the conversation was terminated.
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Idterview w i t h D r . J.J. Nickson by Marks and Miazga i n Memphis on 4 / 2 3 / 7 4 a t about 3 : O O pm. Dr. Nickson i s head of Radiation Therapy atthe West Tennessee Cancer Clinic of the University of Tennessee i n Memphis. H e was the chief of the Industrial Medical Hazards Section of the Metallurgical On the day before the interview,I called Dr. Nickson from Los Angeles to request the interview.At that time,I discussed briefly the nature of the problem, and Dr. Nickson responded that he,Dr. Leon Jacobson, and Dr. Sam Schwartz all had attended or been in contact with the injected patients at the University of Chicago. Dr. Nickson seemed t o be willing to discuss the matter although he stated that he objected to an adversary relationship.I explained that the interview was notto be conducted i n an adversary spirit but rather to collect information required for an enlightened approach tothe matter by the Commission. The matter was not pursued further on the phone but When we arrived at Dr. Nickson's office on the following day, his attitude seemed t o have changed in that the frankness that prevailed during the telephone conversation was replaced by a reticence to enter into substantive discussion. During the interview he claimed that he did not have detailed knowledge of the matter but had only handled the isotope end ofit.Further,he now claimed that he had not been in contact with patients.He was shown documents that reflected his involvement in the situation. These included a paper that he had co-authored with Edwin R. Russell that went into considerable detail about the clinical summaries and the excretion analyses on the first two Chicago patients.Dr. Nickson leafed through the documents but indicated that they did not improve his memory of the situation. The documents included several monthly reports that he as section chief had written to either Dr. Stone patients among other things.Dr. Nickson declined to elaborate on the contents The reports dealt with follow-up analyses on injected
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of the reports or to indicate that they had jogged his memory to the point of enabling him to recall any information of interest. Dr. Nickson said that he did not know who might have talked to the patients, could not shed any light on the matter of informed consent o r disclosure nor did he know who made the injections. Dr. Nickson was asked about the point that Dr. Jacobson had raised as t o whether the third Chicago patient had been injected at Billings or at another hospital in Chicago. Dr. Nickson said that he thought i t extremely unlikely that the patient would have been injected at another hospital(less thana 1%chance). He did suggest that Dr. Henry Rappaport, who has made an extensive study of Hodgkin's cases at the University of Chicago, be approached t o seek the records of that patient.