Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, Friday December 16, 1994

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ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON HUMAN The Advisory Committee met in the Empire Room of the Omni Shoreham Hotel, 2500 Calvert Street, N.W., at 8:OO A.M., Ruth Faden, Chair, RUTH FADEN, Chair ELI GLATSTEIN, Member JAY KATZ, Member PATRICIA KING, Member SUSAN LEDERER, Member RUTH MACKLIN, Member LOIS NORRIS, Member NANCY OLEINICK, Member HENRY ROYAL, Member PHILIP RUSSELL, Member MARY ANN STEVENSON, Member DUNCAN THOMAS, Member REED TUCKSON, Member ALLEN BUCHANAN, Staff GIL WHITTEMORE, Staff JONATHAN MORENO, Staff GARY STERN, Staff VALERIE HURT, Staff DENISE HOLMES, Staff DAN GUTTMAN, Staff

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CHAIRMAN FADEN: That's fine. Mr. Jackling, thank you. I just wanted to clarify one thing. Did you say there are two sons in Rochester of a woman who was MR. JACKLING: Yes. Their mother survived. CHAIRMAN FADEN: And there are two still surviving sons, you were saying, who would be interested in -- MR. JACKLING: Yes. One of them is not -- I tried to get both of them to come, but one was -- is not physically able, and the other just doesn't have any money. I think there's other people there, too. If you could send somebody from the committee, it would be greatly appreciated. CHAIRMAN FADEN: We'll do our best to see if we can arrange to do exactly MR. JACKLING: We might even help financially. CHAIRMAN FADEN: No, no. I don't know what we can do, but we'll figure out the best we can. We really need to hear from the people you're speaking about. So we'll have to find a way to do it. Thank you very much. CHAIRMAN FADEN: Our next presenter is Mr. Fred Boyce. Is Mr. Boyce there? Good morning, Mr. Boyce. Thank you for coming. MR. BOYCE: Well, my name is Fred Boyce, and I was a patient at the Walter Fernald State School. I want to first thank the committee for allowing me the opportunity to First, let me tell you a little about the Fernald School for the Feeble Minded. That was our title at the time during the Forties and Fifties. I was put in the institution April 26, 1949 at the age of seven, paroled out as if I was a criminal on March 29, 1961 at age 19. I was one of 36 children, crammed like cattle into a ward about half the size of a basketball In an abnormal environment such as this, even a normal child would take on the -) characteristics of being retarded. You lose the little sense of reality you may have, and you give up thinking for yourself and conform to the horrendous conditions.

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7 I won't tell you now about the severe physical and mental abuse, but I can assure you, it was no Boy's Town. The idea of getting consent for experiments under these conditions was not only cruel but hypocritical. They bribed us by offering us special privileges, knowing that we had so little that we would do practically anything for attention; and to say, I quote, "This is their debt to society, " end quote, as if we were worth no more than laboratory mice, is unforgivable. To choose a segregated institution, to do experiments on us, is very disturbing to me. It was cruel and unusual punishment in the name of science. Keep in mind, we didn't commit any crimes. We were just seven-year-old orphans. Last winter I went to an auction at the late Dr. Benda's estate. He was the leading research physician at the time, and bought personal papers and books. I recently sat and read some of the papers. In one, I found an interesting document with a list of Down's syndrome patients listed as having bone marrow puncture tests done on them, most likely painful and I would like to have these papers examined, and also the Fernald Task Force Commission failed to mention the room full of very important documents from the Benda's estate that has been donated to the Fernald library. These papers, which may contain information, should be investigated and protected by this committee. Even though I was told I was not on any list, I have information that I was, and contradicts my memory of the various experiments performed on me. I'll sum it up by saying, it is now your debt to society to correct this injustice, and see that it never happens I would like to thank everybody, especially the committee, for allowing me to speak my mind. Special thanks to Secretary O'Leary. We owe you one, and thanks to Sandra Marlowe, The Boston Globe, Massachusetts Representative Ed Markey, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy and family; last but not least, Wally C u m i n s and Cooper Brown of RADLAW. P.S. The Fernald is a much better place today, and in no way does it operate like it did then. That's very important to know that. Also, I want to mention that Quaker Oats, which upset me quite a bit, had not only let them put the isotopes in their oatmeal for us, but they also helped fund it. That really, you know, is an enterprise business. Also, I was wondering if you would let -- Sandra Marlowe was the librarian at the Walter Fernald State School during the time, and she was instrumental in breaking the

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story. If you could take a couple of minutes of my time and let her make a quick talk, I would really appreciate it. CHAIRMAN FADEN: Oh, she's here with you now? MR.BOYCE: Yes, she is. CHAIRMAN FADEN: Yes. MR. BOYCE: Also, I was wondering. They have field trips, I guess, and I wonder if they could have a field trip up in Massachusetts where, you know, that's where all the universities that were involved with these experiments up there. So I don't know if you -- CHAIRMAN FADEN: We have been sending people up investigating in that CHAIRMAN FADEN: We can do more. We can clearly do more, and certainly you're directing us to particular document sources. It's very important. We have some questions, please. We'll make time for your colleague. Ken? MR. FEINBERG: Just a quick question. Am I right that Congressman Markey or Senator Kennedy held hearings up there in the last few months, where a lot of this was discussed. Is that correct? MR. BOYCE: Yes. What they did, they had a task force up there to investigate this, but what happened was -- It was funny, because we found out -- Me and a friend of mine that was at the institution found out that there was an auction at the late Dr. Benda's. He had died 20 years prior to this, and his wife who also was a doctor, not at the Fernald, had just died this past winter. So we decided to do our own little investigation, as best we could, and we went to the auction and bought every kind of thing we could get our hands on. After the auction was over with, we thought that, well, what's going to happen to these other papers that he had. So we alerted -- Ms. Marlowe alerted the commission that it was there, and they had it donated over. Not all of it -- I should add also, a lot of his material was donated through the years to Harvard University, and the sons also kept a lot, you know, things, papers and things it might be, you know, but at least we got that, and it is sitting -- It's a whole room full of documents and stuff. MR. FEINBERG: That was made available to the Senate and House committee when they held the hearings?

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MR.BOYCE: No, no. It came in late, and probably because of that reason,) the investigation was practically over. So, you know -- CHAIRMAN FADEN: But you're saying we can have access to that? MR. BOYCE: Please do. Yes, please try. I don't know. It's at the library, which used to be the old laboratory. CHAIRMAN FADEN: We'll figure it out. Thank you. MR.BOYCE: Please. I think those papers should be looked into. CHAIRMAN FADEN: You said Ms. Marlowe is here? MR.BOYCE: Yes. Could I, please. Thank you very much. I really could just keep your comments to about five minutes, if that would be okay. If you've got extra material to provide us, that would be excellent. MS.MARLOWE: Thank you very much, and thank you, Freddy. Something is very rotten or probably has been very rotten, I feel, in my own CHAIRMAN FADEN: Could you speak into the mike, please? country. I'm the daughter of a Colonel -- MS.MARLOWE: Oh, sure. I'm the daughter of a Air Force Colonel, Colonel Nicholas Caine, who happened to have been at Desert Rock in 1955. Often I -- and I think this is part of what Freddy and all the other people who have had the misfortune to live in what is a Kafkaesque state right now, is what we feared about what happened either to my To find out information, we were denied and refused by practically every agency in the United States government, and probably up until now. I did write an article in Librarv Journal called "Suppression of Nuclear Information, " but after seeing the material that made me suspicious, not because I have degrees but because I happen to be a humanist and concerned and feel about what is right and what is wrong with our protocol or policy, there is much in practically every university that is involved with a medical school or a psychiatric institution that should be looked into. At Fernald there were papers, one from 1968 from Australia about asylums to be used as transplant farms. Dr. Benda, who was one of many of the researchers at Fernald, wrote an article on the biology of psychology, and 1'11just quote one or two things and say, there is more information in oral history of the ordinary people who have experienced these

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-) events than probably most of the histories that you have read that have been very much This was written as part of a paper he gave, Dr. Benda, in Philadelphia in the Fifties. "Recently, together with Dr. Max Renkell, I had an opportunity to study an artificial psychosis produced through LSD in an outstanding American artist. LSD and mescaline represent the most feasible means of studying artificial psychosis, because the etiological agents can be controlled." I don't know how much of other drugs were used along with radiation at Fernald, but there is evidence of it in many of the papers, and I will be delighted to show the committee some of the leads that are there, but a lot of the misuse of medicine to help people must be addressed by this committee, as well as radiation which probably was also used in pharmaceuticals, in germ warfare, in chemical warfare, as well as in nuclear weapons. Please help the people, which means please help the citizens of this country. CHAIRMAN FADEN: Thank you very much, Ms. Marlowe, and thank you for your assistance with the scholarship and the research. We appreciate it. It's very important. Thank you, Mr. Boyce, too. Thank you for your comments. Our last presenter is Ms. Broudy. Good morning, Ms. Broudy. MS. BROUDY: Good morning again. I'd like to make my written statements first. That will take about five minutes, and then I have a few other statements to make, if I This is not -- This five-minute presentation is not the one that I had sent. I think this is the third one I've done. So I think Kris is now passing out the latest version. The intentional exposures of approximately 300,000 veterans to ionizing radiation falls within the parameters of your charter by: (1) Deliberately placing the servicemen in harm's way by ordering them to participate in experiments at nuclear test sites at the Pacific Proving Ground, Nevada test site and any other testing area, both foreign and domestic, and detonating nuclear bombs in their (2) Ordering pilots to fly through the mushroom cloud of an experimental nuclear device, thereby sustaining large amounts of ionizing radiation, which was measured. ( 3 ) After detonation of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki atomic bombs, American J servicemen were ordered to occupy the two cities, thereby absorbing residual radiation which we consider an opportunistic experiment.