DISCLAIMER

The following is a staff memorandum or other working document 
prepared for the members of the Advisory Committee on Human
Radiation Experiments.  It should not be construed as representing
the final conclusions of fact or interpretation of the issues. 
All staff memoranda are subject to revision based on further 
information and analysis.  For conclusions and recommendations of
the Advisory Committee, readers are advised to consult the Final
Report to be published in 1995.



                   * * * * * STAFF MEMORANDUM * * * * *

TO:       Members of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation
	  Experiments

FROM:     Advisory Committee Staff

DATE:     July 20, 1994

RE:       Overview of Briefing Book Materials for July 25-26
	  Meeting



     In prior briefing books, we sought to identify threads that
could be followed to understand the Big Picture of experiments,
and the world in which they were set.  Now we begin to look at
the Big Picture (at least from the 1940's to the early 1950's) as
a whole.  To invoke an apt clich, we take snapshots of the same
elephant from different perspectives:

     1.   the policies and standards announced to govern human
experiments (Tab F);

     2.   the body of radiation standards in which experiments
were set (Tab M);

     3.   the public purposes, agencies and personalities that
drove research experiments  and that may have shaped the kinds of
experiments undertaken (Tab F); and

     4.   the bureaucracies that regulated experimentation (Tab
F).

(Please note that the staff memoranda found in Tab F that discuss
the above perspectives are overlapping in content and should be
read together.)

				1

     The Big Picture brings some questions we have been asking
into increasingly meaningful focus.  For example, if ethics
policies were stated on high, how did they get translated to the
investigators in the field?  The new documentation on the early
AEC bureaucracy begins to fill in the gap between pronouncement
and practice in that agency.  How did the AEC system compare
with that put into place by the Defense Department to implement
the 1953 Secretary of Defense policy on human experimentation?

     The Big Picture permits us to ask new, and hopefully
fruitful, questions.  For example, how do differing regulatory
systems (here, those governing total body irradiation and
radioisotope use) affect the kinds of experiments pursued?
Similarly, did the regulators define "experiment" consistently?
Did they have difficulty defining "experiments", and how did
their definitions compare with those in use now?

     In that, and other cases, the Big Picture indicates that
many questions faced by those in the earlier period appear to be
of striking contemporary relevance.  For example, the documents
indicate that 1947 AEC policies on biomedical research were
governed not simply by questions of medical risk and national
security interest, but also by concerns over lawsuits, public
image, and labor discontent.  What, for example, can we learn
from looking back on the balance struck, in the early days of the
AEC, between the AEC's Insurance Department and its Division of
Biology and Medicine?

     The briefing materials are intended to provide the context
for discussion and debate by which we can begin to make sense of,
and ultimately evaluate, the numerous experiments that have been
identified.  With policies, standards and institutions in mind,
experiments are needed to complete the pictures.

     In Tab H, therefore, we provide the beginning narrative on a
group of experiments--total body irradiation.  This is one of the
sets of experiments that we hope to research as a group.  In Tab
I, we provide an "experimental map" that culls the data available
on some of the experiments identified by one agency--DOE.  

     In the folders to be provided to you at the meeting, you
will also be given briefing materials on the continuing
refinement of the proposals to review contemporary protocols and
interview contemporary subjects to be filed in Tab E.

     We look forward to your discussion of these materials.