ATTACHMENT 25
REPOSITORY     Office of Human Radiation Experiments (OHRE)
COLLECTION     Plutonium Injection Inv. Files (OHREIU)
BOX No.        2
FOLDER         Extra Copies From Rochester Files


Interview with Shields Warren -- 4/9/74

L.A. Miazga, Sidney Marks, Walter Weyzer

LAM: Well, thank you very much Dr. Warren fox taking your
valuable time to meet with us and talk to us about our problem. 
As you probably know, the Commission has asked us to conduct an
inquiry into this matter which involves the injecting of
plutonium into patients at a number of hospitals.

SW:  Right.

LAM: In the conduct of our inquiry, we propose to develop what
happened, why it happened, how it happened, and also the benefits
to science from this program.  We will present the report to the
Commission.  What the Commission will do with the report, we are
in no position to say, but we are going on the premise that it
will be made public.

SW:  Yes.

LAM: In our discussions with you, I think there are two fields
that we might touch upon:  one is the things that happened in the
commission while you were a member of the staff and of which you
have personal knowledge; the other field of interest would be
things that happened before which you know from what others told
you, but which would be valuable to us in pursuing other avenues
of our inquiry.  Now when did you join the staff of the
Commission, Dr. Warren?

SW:  In, I think it was November of 1947, and I stayed as a
member of the staff until June 30 of '52.  Then I became a
consultant and was a member of the Advisory Committee on Biology
and Medicine for a five-year period.  And then I have stayed on
as consultant up to the present time.

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LAM: Who was your predecessor in the position during the fist
eleven months of 1947?

SW:  There wasn't anyone there.  The role was filled to some
extent by three people:  Stafford L. Warren, who has held over
from the Manhattan to some extent and who was still at the
University of Rochester at that time; as you know he went back to
the University of Rochester.  The second was Robert Stone, who
was then a professor of radiology at the University of California
at San Francisco and as you now had been the medical man for the
plutonium project in Chicago.  And they had had a scattering of
help from various people among whom was Hymer Friedell, a
professor of radiology at the now Case, then, Western Reserve,
now Case Western Reserve.  Actually, each of the installations
was practically running on its own from a local area.  The Oak
Ridge has its own medical facilities.  The Los Alamos has its own
medical facilities.  And there had been medical facilities at
Chicago that had been maintained by Leon Jacobson, who is now the
dean of the Medical School there, and by Austin Bures.  At
Brookhaven, they really hadn't gotten underway.  There was just
discussion of whether the old Camp Upon site would be taken over
at that time.

LAM: Yes sir.  Who was in charge of the activity at Rochester?

SW:  That was under Stafford L. Warren.

LAM: And at the University of California also?

SW:  The University of California was under Robert Stone.  Well,
I've got to divide that into two things.  The medical activities
were at San Francisco at the medical school.  Then at the, there
was the Berkeley Lab which was apart from this, except that they
both came under the same area office. This was under Ernest
Lawrence in those days, 


900173						      3


and there was medical activities with regard to isotopes in
particular that was under the guidance of John Lawrence, Ernest's
brother.

LAM: In the, you mentioned before that these activities were
pretty much separated.  Was there central control, or did each
have its own programs and carry them out without any real ____?

SW:  In the Manhattan days, as you know, there was very sharp
segmentation, and there was virtually no central control except
at the very top levels, and there weren't any of the medical
personnel at these very top levels.  When I took over at AEC, we
had to pick up the threads at each installation and find out from
the people there what had been going on, what the local practices
were.

SM:  Dr. Warren, I have heard about a working group consisting of
Bob Stone, Joe Hamilton, Staff Warren, and Hymer Friedell.  Had
you heard of anything like that...

SW:  There was an informal group that was consulted from time to
time if special problems arose.  It was actually an outgrowth of
the Argonne activities.  There had always been very close ties
between the Argonne and Oak Ridge.  And because Stone was the key
man at the Argonne, Staff, as you remember, had been
headquartered at Oak Ridge, and Hy Friedell was at Oak Ridge also
and Joe Hamilton was essentially working both with John Lawrence
on one hand and the Berkeley group and for Bob Stone in San
Francisco as well, and had been with him in the Argonne-Manhattan
activities.

LAM: Did they prepare minutes of their meetings, do you know?

SW:  No, I think these were entirely informal, to the best of my
knowledge.

LAM: Is there any record of any kind that we could ...

SW:  There were zero records that I received when I came to AEC
and had to depend primarily on word of mouth and the medical
regulations and what

9001744						     4

medical history I could get from contractor personnel of the
various installations.  Dag Norwood up at Hanford was a
tremendous amount of help in this, for example.

LAM: In getting the records together?

SW:  Yes.

LAM: Did they keep records of the programs involving the
injection of plutonium into the patients?

SW:  To the best of my knowledge, there must have been some such
records but I have not ever seen them, I have not known of them. 
And when I inquired of Bob Stone, he said that he thought that it
depended primarily on people's memories.

SM:  Dr. Warren, in what way did people acquaint the Commission
with the fact that people were injected with plutonium, and that
those studies had been done.  What was the mechanism for this?

SW:  This came about at an informal talk that I was having with
Joe Hamilton about isotopic injection.  He was, as you know, sort
of the pioneer in, because of the excellent physical training
that he had had as well as medical training, in learning what the
various biochemical utilizations, the so-called metabolic
pathways of the radioisotopes, were.  And a whole series of
radioisotopes were done.  I had been in chose touch with him and
John Lawrence earlier.

SW:  About when was this, sir?

SW:  This conversation ...

LAM: Yeah, at the time of this conversation.

SW:  This was I think somewhere around Christmas time of '47,
possibly around New Years of '57.  but my interest in radioactive
isotopes

9001745							   5

my acquaintance with both Stone and Hamilton went back for quite
a number of years, because I'd been impressed by Hertz's work at
the Massachusetts General with the radioactive iodine.  And I
thought that one could do some very interesting worthwhile things
with P32 as well as with I131.  And up in, this was about late '38,
I guess and I began using P32 experimentally for patients.  In
'39, I think it was, and at that time we could get some from the
Harvard cyclotron, then a you know it vanished and went to Los
Alamos.  And I could get some from the MIT cyclotron, but I used
to get elbowed out very frequently so I would get on the phone
with John Lawrence and he would ask Joe Hamilton to cook me up
some P32 and ship it on.  So that when my patients here had to
have it we were still able to get it for them.  So I'd had an
informal medical relationship, well of course I'd known both of
them for a number of times because I had been fascinated by the
atom-splitting work that Ernest Lawrence had done and had gone
out and talked with him, and John and I were old friends so we'd
had informal ties going back into the 1930's.  As a matter of
fact, I was one of the people who helped him get the first
cyclotron because I happen to be fairly friendly with Mr. Donner
of the Donner Foundation of the Donner Lab named for him and...

SM:  Oh, is that a fact?

SW:  was able to reinforce the request for funds that made the
cyclotron a possibility, the unfortunate thing for the country
(Laughter)

SM:  Dr. Warren wrote articles about the pathology of radiation
injury in about '35 or '36 was that?

SW:  Yes. Yes.  I got into this ...

SM:  Definitive articles

SW:  way back in the 1920's because some of the cancer patients
that had been treated with radiation at Boston City died, and at
autopsy I couldn't find

9001746                                                      6

anything wrong with them, couldn't figure out why the died.  So I
started to get interested in the problems of radiation, what
lethal doses of radiation was.  There were only about half a
dozen people in the world that were interested in the harmful
effects of radiation at that time.  And curiously enough, one of
them was Dr. Suzuki, who was subsequently to be so helpful to
ABCC at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and ...

SM:  Oh, he had been in the field previously?

SW:  Yes, he had worked with Neils Bohr in Copenhagen, in the old
days and I made friend with him by correspondence in the late
'20s and early '30s, so we were in essence picking up an old
friendship __________?

LAM: You mention having Mr. Hamilton tell you around Christmas of
'47 about this matter.  Do you recall when you learned about a
patient having been injected in July of '47 out in California?

SW:  I think my memory I wouldn't trust on this, but I was
sitting down having a general talk with Hamilton about our
respective experiences in the use of isotopes in the early days. 
And he said, "You must have had a pretty shrewd suspicion," or
words to that effect, "that we had to learn something about the
metabolism of these isotopes."  And then I said from this, well,
you of course knew metabolism of a number of the isotopes because
you had published on them, and he said, "yes, but there are some
unpublished things that you probably haven't heard of."  And that
was the starting point, and I don't recall if he gave any
specific time but said among other things, "recently there has
been," I think he put it this way, "there has been some
utilization of plutonium."  And then I had not known of any work
in humans in plutonium up to that time.  So I talked with him a
little about it, and we did not get any facts, figure, or
numbers.

9001747
                                                                7

But he told me that there were a scattering, I think was the word
he used, of cases of advanced disease that had been injected with
plutonium because of the tremendous importance from the
standpoint of the safety of the many workers involved and the
need of knowing, in addition to the data from experimental
animals, some of the metabolic pathways in man.  And in the
course of this, he said something like this:  "You know we have
had something of a problem in this because there were very rigid
restrictions on the use of the word plutonium and the handling of
the material and letting anyone know that there was any such
stuff."  This, you recall, was in the days when most of the
secrecy barriers had not been broken down.  And in fact I think
the major breakdown with plutonium began to come at the time of
the Senate hearings of Hickenlooper.

LAM: (not audible)

SM:  That was into the fifties then, wasn't it?

SW:  Yes.

LAM: Was this during the same conversation in December of around
Christmas in '47?

SW:  I think it's, I can't guarantee that it was because...

LAM: I know it's difficult to recall that conversation. Was there
any dialogue within the Commission on it at that time?

SW:  There was no dialogue in the Commission at that time.  I was
concerned because all I knew about plutonium there was
practically nothing written down that was available, was that it
was very nasty stuff.  And it is my recollection that I talked
with Alan Gregg, who is the chairman of the ACBM at that time and
with whom I worked very closely.  And he said "we've got a sticky
problem here and this, of course, is why you have brought it up
to me;" and I said, "yes, this is why I brought it up" and said
"we've got to learn

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                                                                8
more about this," and I think that I said, "well there are so
many more urgent things, I'm directly responsible for the health
of tens of thousands of contractor employees and I've got to be
sure the things are going smoothly here.  Let's take a little
time and make sure that we are not going to have any epidemics on
our hands, and then we can go into things  that have great
technical interest but have not got practical concern for a very
major percentage of the contractor employees at the present
time."

LAM: Were there any injections after that time?

SW:  There were none that I know of.

SM:  Was anything proposed, Dr. Warren?  Did anyone suggest that
there be any further...

SW:  No.  No.  There were not any proposed.  To the best of my
knowledge, from the time that I took over on, there were not any
injections made.  And I would have insisted that they not be made
if this had been brought up to me at that time.  We were talking
entirely in retrospective terms.  There was a number of years
later, I think around '51 or there abouts, when we began to think
of the plutonium studies in the beagle at Salt Lake.  There was
just a passing discussion when it came to establishing dose
levels of plutonium.  I think someone, I've forgotten whether it
was Pat Durbin or someone from the Salt Lake group, said "well
you remember there have been some injections of plutonium n man,"
and just was dropped there; it was not followed up because it was
apart from the main thread of the conversation.

LAM: At about what time did you or AEC learn that they had
continuing contact with the patients that had been injected with
plutonium?

SW:  I did not learn of this continuing contact while I was in
office at AEC.  I had known that Dag Norwood in particular was in
contact with some of the accidental cases.  I know that Louis
Hempleman was in touch

1001749 
                                                                9
with some of the accidental cases, but I had not known that
contact was being maintained with the injected patients.  I had
assumed because I had been told that they were incurable patients
that they all had died by the time we talked.  I had not done any
specific cross examination as to the numbers of patients or
whether any were still alive.  I had said, I recall, to both
Hamilton and stone that, you know Dag Norwood is keeping a record
of the accidental plutonium cases.  I think those are the ones
that have now gone to Bob Rowland at the Argonne.  I said that
the such records as you have really ought to go to him.

SM:  Actually, Rowland has been active in the follow up of the
surviving patients.  There are four of them, as you probably
know.

SW:  yes.  Now, I've got to jump across a wide gap in time
because it was, I would say, a year ago July that Bob Rowland
talked to me and told me that some of these cases were still
alive and that he was following them up.  And also I think it was
this fall, Pat Durbin talked with me about these same four.

SM:  Dr. Warren, in going through the minutes of the ACBM
meetings, we ran across some reference to Bob Stone submitting
letters in connection with experimental therapy and a
Subcommittee on Human Applications.  Did the...I have some of
these excerpts that are rather brief and cryptic.  Did this issue
of the injected people go up to the whole Advisory Committee?

SW:  No.  No.  This was another thing.

SM:  Yeah.  Was this an entirely different issue...

SW:  yes.  yes.  Yes.  This is an entirely different issues. 
This, incidentally, this must be in 1948 April rather than a 1968
___________ (Laughter)

SM:  Right.

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                                                               10
SW:  This was the use of some patients for radiation therapy when
there was not a clear consensus ont he part of the medical
profession as a whole, that radiation therapy was the soundest
treatment for cases of this type.  These, as I recall it, were
cases that Bob Stone felt, in light of some of the experimental
work that had been done on animals, would be worth trying on
humans.  The weight of evidence was that radiation would not do
anything for them, and there was this issue was raised.
Incidentally, because of the course of these things, of the
studies, some blood counts had been done on them and it was
dangerously low blood counts on them that sort of set off an
alarm clock in ACBM's mind when they saw it.  No, this was not
anything to do.  And the reason Hamilton was in on this was,
subsequently, was because we though that there needed to be, as
these new sources of radiation became more widely available, a
better means of control than existed at the present time.  And
since Hamilton knew more about metabolic pathways than anyone
else, he was a logical ember to be on this.  And in this
particular thing, there wasn't anything to do with the injection
of plutonium.

SM:  Was the issue of the injected people then ever brought in
any formal way to the attention of AEC or ACBM then or was it
just this informal discussion where you became acquainted with
it?

SW:  I think the way it was handled was that Alan Gregg and I
agreed that the best way to do was to see that the rules were
properly drawn up by the Isotope Human Applications Isotope
Committee, which had then come into being, so that use without
full safeguards could not occur, and that we saw no point in
bringing this up after the fact as long as we were sure

9001752
                                                               11

that nothing of the sort could happen in the future.  This was
because we assumed that those patients were all dead at that
time.  We hadn't realized that any of them were still alive.

LAM: Was there any discussion as to whether or not the patients
had consented to be subjects for these injections?

SW:  Yes, because we were reasonably sensitive to thee things at
that time and I'd always made a point in explaining to the
patients I'd injected what went on, and Hamilton told me that he
had explained to the patients that their, they would receive, now
I've got to try to put my thoughts in order in this, that they
would receive an injection of a new substance that was too new to
say what it might do but that it had some properties like those
of other substances that had been used to help control growth
processes in patients, or something of that general sort.  You
could not called it informed consent because they did not know
what it was, but they knew that it was a new and to them unknown
substance.  There was not anywhere near the alertness to informed
consent, of course, in those days that there is at the present
time.  I'm pretty sure that this was an accurate statement
because Hamilton was a very meticulous man, very high scientific
and professional standards.

SM:  Dr. Warren, may I flip this over and ...

SW:  Surely.

END OF FIRST SIDE OF TAPE

SM:  He had knowledge of the Chicago-Rochester patients at that
time.  He had three of his own that he was telling you about. 
Did the people in these various installations know that the
others were doing that and was it a type of coordinated activity
or?

9001752
                                                               12
                                                                 
SW:  Stone may have known because he was really at the top of
medical things as far as plutonium was concerned.  I doubt very
much that Hamilton would have known.

SM:  I wonder if what he said about the informing the patients
would have applied to the other places or would we have to go to
those people and find out directly from them whether they told
the patients in some way.

SW:  I think you could assume that this was pretty good medical
practice, and these were all good doctors.  I think you could
assume that the same general practice held.

SM:  Because it's been our understanding of what we've heard
about it in AEC in recent years was that patients were not told
that they had received plutonium.  Now maybe it's a question of
being told about plutonium which none of them would have...

SW:  Yes.  I think this is exactly it. Because there were two
things:  one, at that time one could not talk about plutonium and
two, it wouldn't have any meaning to the patients if they had
told them.  I would assume that they would have been told that
they were being injected with something that, if they agreed to
it, would help other people.  This was the general statement that
was in common medical use.

LAM: But not necessarily help them?

SW:  Not necessarily them.  This was the sort of thing when I was
trying to study the metabolism of P32.  Several times I would
explain to patients that had advanced leukemia that P32 was good
for leukemia, but that I doubted very much it could help them in
the stage of the disease where they were.  But it could help
others in earlier stages of the disease.  I think quiet possibly
something of that sort might have

900175
                                                               13

been said to them.

WW:  Dr. Warren, do you remember whether Joe Hamilton told
people, told the patients, that the compound that was going to be
injected could possibly have adverse effects?

SW:  This I don't know.  My guess is that the probably would not
have, because they were very ill patients.  They had plenty to
worry about already without additional worries.  Their life
expectancy was such, although wrongly as things have   ?  since,
but at that time, their life expectancy was such that it was not
anticipated they would survive the point that anything would
happen to them.

SM:  We've run across the name of James J. Nickson in connection
with the Chicago group as head of the medical set up there.  Do
you think that he would have been the principal person that we
should go to find out what happened in Chicago, or would Leon
Jacobson be a more suitable person?  Do you recall Nickson at
all?

SW:  Yes, I recall him very well.  He is a very able radiologist,
and as you know, worked a long time at Memorial Hospital and I
believe is now gone back to Chicago.

SM:  Yes, he was at Michael Reese, and I understand now he's in
Memphis.

SW:  Oh, so....

SM:  So that's a recent move.

SW:  I think he would probably have some information.  He was
actually pretty much under Stone's direction and wing.

SM:  And then there, apparently there were other people but they
were also at a lower level; like it would be Stone to Nickson to
Jacobson and other people there.

SW:  Yes. Yes. Yes.

9001754
                                                               14

SM:  How about he Rochester setup at that time?  now you said
Staff Warren was in charge of it.  And we've heard Sam Bassett's
name mentioned, and he's dead now.

SW:  Yes.

SM:  But were there others at the time who were?

SW:  Joe Holland might possibly    had some contact.  I don't
know.  Bassett is the only one I know that had direct contact
with the radioisotope program there, and I did not know of it as
a, as including plutonium among the isotopes used.

LAM: How about Christine Waterhouse?

SW:  That name doesn't register with me.  Christine Waterhouse. 
No.  No.

SM:  She got involved in Rochester a little later, I think.  She
is currently the physician to a couple of these patients hand has
been through the years.  I think in other respects as well as
this.  But that's now her named surfaced.

WW:  Dr. Warren, let me see if I interpret correctly what you
said earlier.  At the time these patients were injected on the
West Coast, you think its unlikely that those people knew that
other people were being injected at Rochester or Chicago.  You
don't think that they knew of each other's programs.

SW:  I don't think they knew of each other's programs.  It was a
very rigid system of compartmentalization in the Manhattan days. 
And this maintained, and when I came in November of '47, one of
my hardest jobs was to figure out a means of coordinating the
protection standards of the general program, medically and
experimentally in the biomedical fields, at the various
installations because they had very little, if any, idea of what
went on.

9001755
                                                               15
                                                                 
People like Staff Warren who were at Oak Ridge and at Rochester
of course knew what went on in both places.  And a few of the
people like Friedell and possible Nickson who were back and forth
a little between the Argonne.  But Dag Norwood had no idea what
went on elsewhere.

WW:  So, in other words, at the time that Hamilton talked to you
about the patients, he still didn't know about the Rochester
______?______

LAM: However, in all probability, the people on top would know
what was going on at the various institutions.

SW:  Yes, I think Stone probably

LAM: Yeah.  Because to have them run at four locations, at Oak
Ridge, San, Chicago, and Rochester would mean some kind of
direction or coordination.

SW:  Yeah.

SM:  Would you ever have heard about who issued the orders to
carry out the studies at these places?

SW:  No.  My.... No, I wouldn't have any idea, and I don't even
know whether this started on the medical side or the industrial
side or the research physicist side. I just haven't any feel for
it.

LAM: Do you have any idea where the materials came from that were
injected?

SW:  No.

LAM: Could you guess?  We don't know either.

SW:  My...  I probably could guess that it might have come from
Hanford.  

WW:  There is on record very early in the game, I think it's in
that article by Pat Durbin, that one of the people that very
early in the game focused the attention on the possible toxicity
of plutonium was Glenn Seaborg, who then he himself made a
certain amount of material available to ...

SM:  I think to Joe Hamilton

WW:  ...Joe Hamilton for biological experimentation.  It was
very, very early in the game. What would have, I'm asking you to
speculate, what

9001756							  16

would have been the chain of command on the West Coast?  Could
you make a guess to that?

SW:  I think that you'd have to speak of the bay area rather than
the West Coast because as far as I know there was no common chain
of command between Hanford and the San Francisco area.  The area
office was the central point, as you know though Manhattan was
extremely decentralized and a lot of authority rested in the area
office.  And my guess is that both Bob Stone and John Lawrence
had input and contacts with the area manager. The office as in
Berkeley at that time.

SM:  Was that the AEC office that you're talking about...

SW:  No, that was the Manhattan district at that time.  It became
the AEC office.  But you see the AEC came into existence before
it was a functioning unit and sort of gradually took over from
the Manhattan.  And this was a period of pretty close to a year.

SM:  I think I've heard about that, and it started from about
August 1 of '46, I think and lasted on

SW:  Yes.

SM:  Was there communication between anyone else than, anyone
other than Hamilton and the AEC about this matter at all?  Was
there discussion with anyone beyond your conversation with Joe
Hamilton at that time?  In other words, would you have discussed
it with Stone or Friedell or Stafford or anyone else?

SW:  I am sure I would have discussed it with Stone because he
was the key man in the area an in the sense he was Joe Hamilton's
boss.  Joe had two bosses.  he worked for both John Lawrence and
with Stone.  And I am sure, although I haven't a sharp memory on
this, that I discussed it with Stone.  It is sort of blanked over
as far as Stone is concerned by my discussion of this radiation
for therapy. This type of thing.

9001657
                                                          17

WW:  This discussion was restricted to the cases in San
Francisco.

SW:  Yes.  Yes.

WW:  How did you find out, or did you find out that there were
additional people injected in Rochester and ...

SW:  This, I would say, was more a gradual process of osmosis. 
One might say I would pick up a stray bit of information one
place or another, and I think that the first time that I knew of
things having extended beyond these cases was in a conversation
with, who was the man who came from General Electric and then to
Los Alamos?

SM:  Jack Healy?

SW:  No.  No.  He has now died.

SM:  Could that have been Tom Shipman?

SW:  Tom Shipman!  That's it.  And I think I recall a casual
mention from Tom that he had heard of additional cases to these
but had no detailed knowledge of them.

LAM: About when was this?

SW:  This must have been, let's see 50; in the early 50's.  I'm
not quite sure when.  And he did not have any details or any
first-hand knowledge.

SM:  Than at the time this came up it didn't look like it would
be any source of embarrassment to the AEC or the industry or
medical group then?

SW:  I don't think we thought of it from that angle carefully at
that time.  We regarded it as an accomplished fact that we would
not ourselves do the like of the medical knowledge and the
attitude, the medical ethics, in general that were prevalent at
that time. That we could understand in the stress of wartime, in
the problem of numbers of contractor personnel who

9001762
                                                            18

might well be accidentally at risk.  It was important to know
something about this.  The rules we set up for the use of
isotopes, the aid of this Subcommittee that's mentioned in the
minutes here, was planned to make sure that there would be
adequate consideration of every angle before radioactive isotopes
were used.  And as practically worked out, those have been very
sound rules.  I think fundamentally they have not been changed. 
There have been a few minor shifts in them, but the general
thread has held for the, oh gosh, over ...

SM:  To about 25 years...

SW:  ...yes, over 20 years that they have been in existence.  And
incidentally, this has introduced a tremendous new factor in
medicine because it's changed our knowledge of medicine and of
biochemistry as far as the whole world is concerned.

WW:  Just for my own curiosity.  At the time you set those rule,
regulatory of course didn't exist.

SW:  No.

WW:  I mean this was part of your charge.

SW:  Yes.  Yes.  It was a very simple regulatory mechanism
because nobody could get the stuff, except from Oak Ridge.  And
Oak Ridge wouldn't let it go unless there was an okay from the
Subcommittee.

WW:  Oh, I see.

SM:  I've never heard of any problems other than this very old
one.

SW:  Yes.  No, I think that these were thoroughly sound rules and
worked quite well.

WW:  it's not until now that I realize that part of the charge of
the Division indeed at some time was regulatory activities.

SW:  Yes. Yes.

WW:  I never realized that.

SW:  Yes, well we had all sorts of things to worry with.  One
time I

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had to approve the sanitary regulations for the largest trailer
camp in the world because Hanford...listen there were ten
thousand men in trailers out there, and we had to say to B&M what
the temperature of the dishwasher was and all sorts of things. 
(Laughter)

LAM: That has gone back to desert now.

SW:  Yes, Yes, every time I go past the site, I thank my lucky
starts that things went as smoothly as they did.  Because that
was a rough and tumble group that we had there, really hardboiled
construction men and impossible to reason with them.  You had to
say, "this is it, god dammit."  (Laughter)

SM:  They had a tremendous turnover there, too, because every
time a windstorm would come up, they'd lose thousands of workers.

LAM: Except for the bootleggers, they stayed during the whole
entire thing.

SM:  Leo, do you have?

LAM: Yes, I would like to just pose one question.  Would you give
us some of your thoughts on the benefit to science that has
resulted from this program of injecting patients with plutonium?

SW:  This is very difficult to say because we have to know before
we can be sure that isotopes are going to behave in the same way
in the lower animals and in man.  We know that there are certain
types of isotopes that are picked up extraordinarily in some
species and not in other species.  And no matter how well one
applies to things, applies animal experiments and tries to reason
for them, you cannot be sure when you're dealing with a metabolic
field, cause there maya be some subtle difference in human
metabolism from animal metabolism.  And it, I think it would be
very difficult when one takes the framework of the cold war, the
hydrogen bomb race with Russia, to have without upsetting the
peace of the world, to have kept back our plutonium production. 
So given the assumption that we

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had to have plutonium, and the knowledge that no matter how
careful one is there is always the possibility of accidents, we
did have to know how to take care of accident cases when they
came to us for help.  And one could not simply take animal data
and say this holds for man.  On this basis, I think one can say
that it probably would have been inexcusable to have continued to
manufacture plutonium if there was not some meager knowledge at
least that plutonium in man was not startlingly different from
plutonium in the animal.  I don't know that that's a very
satisfactory answer, but that's about the only one I can give.

WW:  I'm sure.  But you do feel that that kind of information,
the early information, the early excretion and deposition, that
information was provided by these few experiments to make a
reasonable assumption that man is not too much different from the
animals that were studied.

SW:  I think that we might conceivably have done, taken one other
course.  We might have taken some primates, chimpanzees instead,
and injected them.  But again you have the problem because we
know that the rat and the mouse are fairly different from one
another in some of their metabolic processes. This would have
still left things open to question.  I think that we might, had
we known to the full the number of accidental exposures across
the world.  But we had no access, and to any other information on
our own, of course, and to the best of our knowledge at that time
we had the only plutonium that there was.  Looked at from the
standpoint of a quarter century afterwards,    ?   said maybe you
could have waited and tried to accumulate accident cases to give
you the information.  But when you don't know and when you are
worried that any day you may get a case you'll have to say what
shall be done, you want to do the best you can to get that
information.

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SM:  In fact, the excretion curves for man proved to be quite
different from the one that they had at that time, I think for
rats and rabbits.  

SW:  Right.  Right.

SM:  Man excreted much more slowly than the animals did studied
up to that point.

SW:  So this is one of the types of metabolic differences that
sort of convince one when arguing from animals to man.

WW:  That what I was trying to establish, that there is a
positive contribution from these studies, the knowledge of ...

SM:  Yeah, our concept of the body burden we'll say in 1950 would
have been much different if we'd been relying ont eh early animal
data.

WW:  Yeah, that must have?

SM:  In comparison     with the human data

SW:  I think one can fairly say that this is the sort of thing
that would have to be done, that if it had to be done today, one
probably would go at somewhat differently than the way in which
it was done.  But the need would outweigh clearly in my mind the
attendant circumstances of the injection.

LAM: Well, thank you very much, Dr. Warren.

SM:  It's very kind of you.

LAM: And it's certainly informative.

SW:  I'd be very much interested, because I expect you've been
talking to a number of people, to see how well my memory has
dovetailed

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