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Comments on meeting with Dr. Hempelmann on'Apri1 1 7 , 1974 At the time of the Manhattan Engineering District Dr. Hempelmann was initially the only physician i n charge of occupational medicine a t Los Alarms and as such was faced with the responsibility for the health protection of several thousands of plutonium workers. He stated that at that time only inadequate information on the met abd is m of plutonium in rats was available which was of limited usefulness in defining protection criteria for the workers. During a visit by Stafford Warren, Hymer Friedel l, (and perhaps one other person), Hempelmann and/or Langham pointed out the inadequacy of information t o set health protection criteria and recommended that information on metabolism of plutonium be obtained i n "patients". According t o Hempelmann, Stafford Warren on return to Rochester initiated a clinical program presumably under a contract with Dr. Bassett who at that time wasin charge of the Metabolic Ward. It is not clear whether on the basis of first hand knowledge o r through discussions with others but Dr. Hempelmann thinks that Dr.Bassett prepared the solutions to be injected, prepared the syringes and handed these toa physician for injection of the patient.He is quite positive that the latter physician did not know the contents of the syringe. In addition he believes that a deliberate decision was made notto inform the patient of the nature of the product that was injected. It i s important in this respect to remember that this decision may have been based on the security aspects of the project. Dr. Hempelmann stated that he knew the studies were being conducted but that he was never directly involved and never discussed them with Dr. Waterhouse. Also at the time the injections were performed Dr. Waterhouse was a resident
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atthe Metabolic Ward and Dr. Hempelmann believes that she was not directly Wright Langham was only involved asthe focus for plutonium assay of the excreta collected by the Rochester physicians. Hempelmann remembers that someone told him, perhaps Langham, that at .. the time when the AEC took over, the AEC's biomedical advisory committee were informed of these experiments. "They were quite upset" and initially considered bringing this before the Ethics Committee. This was never done for reasons Dr. Hempelmann was not involved in the recent follow-up but knew about it through contacts with Pat Durbin and perhaps Robley Evans.