Attachment 12

 
                                 

C.L. Marshall, Deputy Declassification Officer,     October 23, 1947
Technical Information Branch
Albert K. Holland, Jr., M.D., Acting Medical Advisor

DECLASSIFICATION OF DOCUMENT

SYMBOL:   AECT

The document entitled "The Effect of Folic Acid on Radiation
Induced Anemia and Leucopenia" by Jacobson, Stearner and Simmons is
hereby returned to your office as requested.  The paper has been
reviewed in detail, as well as discussed with Dr. Jacobson at a
recent meeting which we both attended.

This office sees no objection to declassifying this paper for
publication in the medical journals since purportedly the human
work was done in the Department of Medicine of the University of
Chicago.



                              _____________________
                              Albert H. Holland, Jr., M.D.

1 Attachment
Document by Jacobson, Stearner & Simmons

                     UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

                          October 6, 1948

Shields Warren, M.D./
Atomic Energy Commission
1901 Constitution Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C.

Dear Doctor Warren:                                    RE:CH-3868

     I have recently been shown a letter from Mr. Keller, the
Declassification Officer at Oak Ridge, in which he says that both
paper not be declassified at this time, because it is felt that it
contains material the release of which would be prejudicial to the
best interest of the Atomic Energy Commission, in that it might
result in adverse publicity and even encourage litigation".  The
reason for these statements is that this paper concerns x-ray
exposure of human beings.

     With regard to the first statement concerning adverse
publicity, I thought that this item was taken care of when we
stated in the paper that the patients were incurable by any known
means of therapy.  We could with honesty and sincerity, add a
paragraph such as the following to the section headed "Material",
on page 5:

     "The people used in groups I and I were individuals to
     whom the medical profession could offer no treatment that
     was at all specific or known to be helpful.  The x-ray
     exposures that were given had as reasonable a chance as,
     or even a more reasonable chance than any other known
     type of treatment of doing the patients some good.  Since
     this manuscript is concerned only with the effect on the
     blood, the clinical condition of the patients is not
     discussed at any length."

     The third group of patients were volunteers who knew exactly
what they were doing and therefore do not become a matter of any
dispute.

     With regard to the lawsuit part of the program, I think that
this could be taken care of readily by the elimination of the
initials of the patients.  I must confess that the inclusion of the
initials of the patients slipped past my editorial eye or they
would have been taken out.  With the initials removed, there will
be no means by which the patients can ever connect themselves up
with the report.  You will note that the location of the patients
has been omitted except for the acknowledgement at the end of the
article to Doctors Brunschwig and Hamann of the Billings Hospital
and Max Cutler of the Chicago Tumor Clinic.  I think that with the
changes suggested there could be no possibility of either adverse

*the Medical Advisor and the Insurance Branch have recommended

Dr. Warren - 2                                            10-6-48

publicity or litigation.

     Might I therefore request that you or someone designated by
you, review this article and see whether you can agree with my
conclusion and thus declassify it so that it can be included in the
Medical Volume of the National Nuclear Energy Series, Plutonium
Project Portion.

     Thanking you for your attention to this matter and regretting
the trouble it causes you, I remain

                              Yours sincerely,




                              Rbt. S. Stone
RSS:ab                        Robert S. Stone, M.D.




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