ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS

July 25, 1994

By Eugene P. Trani

President, Virginia Commonwealth University

Madam Chairperson, ladies and gentlemen of the committee, on
behalf of Virginia Commonwealth University, I thank you for this
opportunity to speak with you today.

Under the auspices of the United States Department of Energy, the
Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments has been given
a charge of historic and moral significance: to learn of the
material and ethical scope of radiation experiments conducted
during the Cold War.

We in the academic community must share in your task. Supported
by the Atomic Energy Commission and the military, some of this
work was conducted on our campuses. That responsibility, however,
carries the equally important obligation for all of us to apply
the most rigorous standards of intellectual honesty. Otherwise,
the risk is too great that your work will be sensationalized out
of all proportion to its true intent.

It is that risk that I would like to talk briefly about today.

At Virginia Commonwealth University, we have been learning all we
can about radiation studies that took place from 1949 to 1959 in
our Medical College of Virginia's burn unit -- the first civilian
burn unit in the country. Our involvement, however, has come not
as a result of being named in the DOE investigation but because
of a newspaper article. An essay titled "Burning Secrets: In a
Virginia Hospital, A Cold War Time of Strange Experiments"
published by Cliff Honicker, director of the American
Environmental Health Studies Project of the Commission on
Religion in Appalachia, in the June 19 edition of The Washington
Post opens with the following: "Between 1949 and at least 1957,
the Medical College of Virginia (MCV) ran a secret metabolic lab
whose primary goal was preparation for massive nuclear
casualties. Imbued with Cold War zeal and scientific arrogance,
doctors conducted a series of potentially dangerous experiments
on hundreds of unaware human subjects, most of them poor and
African American."

The studies conducted at MCV were neither secret nor dangerous;
nor did they take advantage of vulnerable populations. As
examples, a radioactive isotope incorporated in one of the
studies -- chromium-51 -- is still part of a standard diagnostic
test used around the world. In the course of the project, 27
articles were published in nationally recognized scientific
journals; it also received coverage in local newspapers. And, in
part of the project, African-American and women volunteers were
purposely selected so that the research team could study the
factors of skin pigmentation and gender in burns.

In all, what resulted from this work were the discoveries that
would lead to the protocols used today to treat burn victims.

As bad science and bad history, Honicker's article contributed
nothing to the committee's charge to help the real victims of
Cold-War radiation studies. It possibly, however, created new
victims: our academic community, former patients alarmed by these
allegations, and certainly the families of the MCV faculty who
worked on these studies.

Following a rebuttal that I wrote for the Post (published on July
3, 1994, under the title "No Burning Secrets"), Robert R. Evans,
the son of Dr. Everett Idris Evans who directed the MCV project,
wrote to me in behalf of his mother, brother, and sister to thank
me for VCU's response. He noted in his letter: "I was a young boy
at the time of these events, but not too young to appreciate the
extraordinary character and dedication of this group of
physicians . . . I am greatly saddened that their contribution
would be marred in any way."

As our archival record reveals, these were, in fact,
extraordinary, compassionate individuals, particularly regarding
the volunteer prisoners who, we learned, had participated in some
of the studies. In correspondence from 1951 with the Department
of Welfare and Institutions in Richmond, Dr. Evans wrote: "I
consider all of these experiments quite safe. Indeed, it is
planned that we will carry out on ourselves such experiments
before we would ask the prisoners to volunteer for them."

During this time, Dr. W. J. H. Butterfield, a research fellow at
MCV who participated in the project, also would record a series
of observations on using prisoners as volunteers in a document
that could easily have served as the blueprint for the tenets of
informed consent. He noted, for example, that human subjects
should understand beforehand the procedures to be used in the
research and the risks it poses, that they should be free to
withdraw from the study at any time, and that every attempt must
be made to minimize suffering. He also stated that "any human
experiment must undertake to be open to inquiry and, if
necessary, investigation. Here is a way to separate sadistic from
humanistic experimentation."

It is true that nationalism -- as well as national purpose --
fueled the Cold War. It does not necessarily follow, however,
that the science and the scientists that benefitted from federal
support during this period were inherently unethical.

Having been partners in these radiation studies, the government
and the academic community now should work together to ensure
that this story is told thoroughly and accurately -- and that, in
the process, the real victims are helped. Objectivity and a
genuine desire for insight must drive our efforts.

We are looking to you, the members of the Advisory Committee on
Human Radiation Experiments, to set that vitally important tone.

Thank you.