ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS _ _ _ KNOXVILLE PANEL MEETING Grand Ballroom Raddison Summit Hill Hotel Knoxville, Tennessee Thursday, March 2, 1995 The above entitled matter came on for Public Hearing pursuant to Notice at 9:05 a.m. PRESENT WERE: On behalf of the Advisory Committee DR. NANCY OLEINICK, Chair DR. HENRY ROYAL, Committee Member STEVE KLAIDMAN, Counsel to Committee INDEX OF SPEAKERS PAGE GROUP ONE Paul S. White......................................... 9 Dorothy Gay Brown..................................... 14 Betty Freels.......................................... 18 Mary Bunch............................................ 21 Margaret Jacobs....................................... 28 Dorothy McRight....................................... 32 David Lee............................................. 36 Linda Litton.......................................... 38 Dr. Karl Z. Morgan.................................... 40 GROUP TWO Dr. Gary Madsen....................................... 55 Richard Sheldon....................................... 61 Janice Stokes......................................... 63 Shirley Rippletoe..................................... 69 Bill Clark and Robert Don Jones....................... 76 Claudia Soulyarette................................... 84 Dick Smyser........................................... 89 Floyd Grizzell........................................ 94 Fred and Mary McNamara................................ 98 GROUP THREE Dr. Bill Burr.........................................105 Dr. Bill Bibb.........................................110 Dr. Shirley Fry.......................................124 Acie Byrd and Rev. Hardil Thomas......................132 Emma Craft............................................136 Mary and Ron Hamm.....................................138 Venia Lazenby.........................................146 Reba Neal.............................................148 Dot McLeod and Mary Lynn Stanley......................151 Richard Vaughn........................................157 GROUP FOUR Dr. Frank Comas.......................................162 Ann Sipe..............................................170 Freda Jo Burchfield...................................178 Barbara Humphreys.....................................183 Wilton McClure........................................186 Irene Sartain.........................................187 Bruce Lawson..........................................190 Jeff Hill.............................................191 Brenda Lee............................................192 Peter Lewis...........................................197GROUP FIVE Carolyn Szetela.......................................203 Doris Baker...........................................208 Gloria Nelson.........................................211 Acie Byrd.............................................215 Brenda Branham........................................218 Ann Marie Herrod......................................222 David Hetchpeth.......................................228 Cooper Brown..........................................232 Howard M. Switzer.....................................236 P R O C E E D I N G S DR. OLEINICK: I'd like to welcome you all to what I believe is the fourth small panel meeting of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. I'd like to just take a couple of minutes to explain who we are and why we're here. As many of you know, the Committee was empaneled by President Clinton last year with the function -- I'm sorry, I just made a terrible faux pas in the middle of a sentence. I have to have this meeting officially opened by the representative of the President. MR. GARCIA: Good morning and welcome. As the designated federal employee, I officially call this meeting to order. (Laughter.) DR. OLEINICK: I think I can now finish my sentence. Thank you, Jerry. I'm sorry, I'm not usually the Chair of this Committee and our Chair, Dr. Faden, knows how to do this better than I do. As I was saying, the Committee was empaneled last year by President Clinton with the function of reviewing all of the information available on human radiation experiments in the cold war era, and to determine what the standards and practices were for the ethical conduct of those experiments in that time. In order to do that, the Committee and its staff has been collecting and reviewing a veritable mountain of data. And an important part of our mission is to hear from the public, to find out what the citizens of this country who knew of, participated in or were subjects of those experiments have to tell us. That's why we're here in Knoxville. This is the fourth meeting in which representatives of the Committee have come out to hear from you. We've chosen Knoxville, of course, because it served as the home of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and is one of the centers of the AEC, and some of the experiments of concern were conducted in this area. Before continuing, I'd like to introduce the two of us who are members of the Committee and the Committee staff. I'm -- as you can see from the sign -- Nancy Oleinick. I'm a professor of radiology and biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University, and a radiation biologist. Henry, would you like to introduce yourself? DR. ROYAL: Sure. My name is Henry Royal, I'm an internist and nuclear medicine physician at Washington University in St. Louis. DR. OLEINICK: Now the third member who is listed, Dr. Susan Lederer, couldn't be here, she had babysitting problems. And I have asked Mr. Klaidman, Steve Klaidman, to assist us, to be the third person up here at the head table. Steve, would you introduce yourself? MR. KLAIDMAN: Yes, I'm counsel to the Committee and Director of Communications. I was a journalist for 23 years and a Fellow of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown and of the Institute for Health Policy Analysis. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. Now, I would also like you to be aware of the staff members who are in the audience out there. Would you just stand up so that people can see who you are. (Staff members stand.) DR. OLEINICK: I'd like you to be aware of who they are because we are under some very severe time constraints. As you can see from the list that you were presented, there are many people who want to present testimony to us today, and we are going to have to have some rather harsh rules in order to meet these time constraints. What we have been doing is allowing each presenter to talk for seven minutes. We have a timer here that will flash and do terrible things at the end of that seven minutes. And that's to be fair because we don't want one person eating into another's time. And we are going to enforce this rule rather vigorously. You have a choice when you present of using the entire seven minutes for your own presentation. We may wish to ask some questions of you and if you leave us time, we will do that. And if there is not time, we will not be able to do it. If there is not enough time for you to present all of the information that you wish to, the staff are here for the purpose of receiving additional documentation. If you want to talk to them, you can certainly talk to them here or on the phone. We want as much information as you can give us. Now, we will be talking to people in groups and you all, I think, know who you are. We'll begin with group one and we'd like everybody to be ready so that we can move from one person to another. We have a list, but there's always the possibility of deletions, additions, changes, whatever, so I would like everybody who is going to be speaking, to make sure that they've checked in with Kris Crotty. Kris, where are you? There she is over there. Okay. She's got the red suit. So if you will just check with her so that she knows that you are going to be presenting. Is there anything else? (No response.) DR. OLEINICK: Okay, I think we'd like to begin with group one, we'll be hearing from Dr. Karl Morgan first and the other members of this group are Mr. White, Ms. Brown, Ms. Freels and Ms. Bunch, Ms. Jacobs, Ms. McRight, Mr. Litton and Mr. Lee. If you're all here, Dr. Morgan. (No response.) DR. OLEINICK: He's not here? Hmmm, that's a good start. I think we'll just go to the next one, in case he shows up late. Mr. Paul White. Would you come up here now since Dr. Morgan does not appear to be here? It's necessary for us to sometimes do this out of order. Mr. White, if you would take the seat -- any one of those seats is fine. I'd like you to be aware and speak into the microphone, number one. And number two, when you've reached about three minutes before the end, that monitor near you will flash yellow and then red when you've reached the seven minutes, I believe. Okay, Mr. White, do you have a presentation? Do you have any testimony you'd like to give to us, Mr. White? GROUP ONE PAUL S. WHITE MR. WHITE: Well, I would like to say that I'm Paul S. White and I reside at 101 Bennett Lane in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and I've lived there in Oak Ridge, Tennessee for about 50 years and I'm concerned, you know, about what's going on in Oak Ridge. I'd like to say, you know, that my wife and I, we raised five daughters there in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and I'm concerned about their health. I would like to first say that I'm concerned, you know, how the studies is ongoing. I happened to be the individual that ordered the study on mercury in the human body in Oak Ridge, Tennessee through our state health department. Disease Control in Atlanta, you know, did the analyzation of lots of hair and urine sample of people from Oak Ridge to Kingston, Tennessee. And the way it turned out, you know, I'm concerned, you know, about the way it's twisted up, you know, involving people's lives or their health. And this panel -- well, I know we're purposely here, you know, to talk about the injection, you know, of the radiation and stuff like that. But I'm concerned about what we've got ongoing trying to help, you know, people in this particular hemisphere, you know, with the environment. And if y'all want to ask me some questions, well then maybe I could answer some. I'm not feeling too well this morning. DR. ROYAL: You mentioned that you were working with the public health department in Tennessee, is that -- MR. WHITE: Yeah, the study was -- I ordered the study through the state health department in Nashville, Tennessee and they came into Oak Ridge and all the way down to Kingston, lots of hair and urine samples. We rented a truck. They stated, you know, what you had to do was when you get locks of hair and urine samples, you have to have it in under a cooling process when you go to CDC in Atlanta, which was the greatest institution to analyze locks of hair and urine samples. DR. ROYAL: If I could ask you some specific questions. Is there a report that exists regarding this study of mercury? MR. WHITE: Yes, there were two people that had health damage, you know, in this mercury study. DR. ROYAL: This was non-radioactive mercury? Yes or no? This was non-radioactive mercury, this is the element mercury? MR. WHITE: I know, but I mean, Disease Control, they declared there was two persons that, you know, had damage done, you know, by the study, you know, according to their report. But so far, the efforts haven't been put forth, you know, to try to do anything about helping these people. DR. ROYAL: I think the best thing that you could do is if you could provide us with a copy of those reports so that we could look at it and get some better idea of what your concerns are. MR. WHITE: I haven't got the report with me, but I can get it to you. DR. ROYAL: Good. MR. WHITE: And really, I haven't been satisfied with the report myself, I've challenged it. I happen to be a stakeholder, you know, in the study. I was there in Oak Ridge to try to remediate the East Fork of Poplar Creek. We've been into that study too long now and I'm concerned about the outcome of that. And I live right there on that creek and they're doing the work, you know, I mean too one-sided, to me, to try to protect my health and my family's health, which my wife and myself, I've been sick for 11 years and my wife, she's just recuperating over a double aneurysm and of course, she's been in two homes, and she is back home, she's walking a little and communicating a little bit now. DR. ROYAL: Good. MR. WHITE: It's just the thing, the leaders, you know, in this area, you know, is not doing this thing right and I hope this panel, you know, will take some initiative to do something about it. Because we're in a trenches situation there in Oak Ridge and we have lived there on this creek for almost 50 years now. And just thank God that we are still alive, but mostly all of my friends and co-workers, they're all dead, and most of them died with cancer. And I'd like to say that I've got a brother, you know, that just got all of the information on him through K-25, he worked there 36 years. He died with cancer. And I hope, you know, something will come out of, you know, the study you all are doing, get the President on top of this thing and Vice President Gore, I worked along with him, you know, ever since 1978, as he was my Senator, you know, from the state. DR. OLEINICK: Mr. White, your time is up, but I think what you're telling us is very important and I think what would help us a great deal is if you would provide us with the documents because the staff will certainly go through them very carefully. If you can provide us with the documents concerning the CDC reports and your comments on them, we would consider these very important and look into them. We thank you very much for your testimony. MR. WHITE: Well, I've got the report at home and I'll go home and get it and bring it back over. DR. OLEINICK: That would be fine, we'd like that very much, that would be very helpful. MR. WHITE: You'll be here until tomorrow? DR. OLEINICK: We'll be here all day today. MR. WHITE: You'll be here tomorrow too? DR. OLEINICK: No, no, we will not be here tomorrow. DR. ROYAL: The staff can give you a mailing address that you'll be able to send the reports to. DR. OLEINICK: Right. MR. WHITE: Okay. Well, I'll leave now and I'll go get it and bring it back to you. DR. OLEINICK: That would be very helpful, thank you very much. MR. WHITE: Thank you. DR. OLEINICK: The next person is Ms. Dorothy Gay Brown. Ms. Brown. You can sit anywhere there, pick one. DOROTHY GAY BROWN MS. BROWN: Do I begin? DR. OLEINICK: Yes, just speak into the microphone. MS. BROWN: Well, I wrote a couple of notes but I'm not sure if I can go by the notes. First of all, I'm an elementary teacher and I was taught to attack problems in a simple and simplistic and straight-forward way, and I'd like to do that. I've had serious health problems since 1956 when I was 15 years old. I met Dr. William K. Reed two years ago and he's been the only physician that I've come in contact with that has been courageous enough to make a simple and straight-forward attack to the problem, in that he said "you are in trouble, I think I can fix it" and he's done just that. But he needs help. He can't do it alone and the physicians in this area are scared to come forward and join his efforts to address our health problems, such as mine. I was thinking in another simple and straight-forward way, if I match the progress that my special education students have made with some of the efforts that all of you have made, I think you all would be classified as slow learners. I think we need to move forward and address the problems that face us and come to reality with the problem and attack it and fix it, as Dr. Reed has demonstrated. I have medical records that can be given to each and everyone -- anyone that's interested, and the disease markers or the lab work will indicate that I have made progress and there's proof that we can help people here and address the health issues and fix the problems, if we're willing to work together. Any questions? DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. It's not -- can you give us a little more information as to what the health problems are and what Dr. Reed is doing for you? MS. BROWN: Well, when I was 15, I started out with severe headaches and autoimmune problems like allergies and just immune breakdown where I couldn't fight infection. It has now progressed to the point where in the last five years, I've had severe joint problems and liver inflammatory problems where the toxins or whatever affects the liver. It's mostly inflammatory problems with infections. DR. ROYAL: And what has Dr. Reed done to make these problems go away? MS. BROWN: First of all, he identified the problem, in that the other doctors would just say "you have rheumatoid arthritis" and end up taking methotrexate, or the standard treatment for just arthritis. But he has gotten to the root of the problem without toxic drugs like methotrexate and he's treated me with antibiotics and other things that keep down the inflammatory reaction so that the anemia, severe, chronic anemia that occurs with the inflammatory reactions, can start to work right, so that you don't have to take toxic medicines. DR. ROYAL: You said that physicians in the community were scared. MS. BROWN: Uh-huh. DR. ROYAL: Scared of what? Could you elaborate on that a little bit? MS. BROWN: They're exactly scared to say "I know what's wrong with you." I mean, I think they really know what's wrong with us, but they say "Go back to your family physician, I don't want to help you or I can't help you", but you know they can. They're denying the fact that there's anything wrong -- "go to your psychiatrist", just go anywhere but don't bother me. They don't give you follow-up, they don't say exactly what's wrong when you know you're seriously ill. When you have fever and pain, you can't say that there's nothing wrong. You have to function and you can't function, it's just a slow, drawn-out illness and you don't have follow-up. If they don't tell you to come back -- why? DR. ROYAL: And you think that's because they're afraid of something? MS. BROWN: I'm definitely sure. They've told me they're afraid, they've written me four letters from four different categories -- rheumatology, endocrinology -- I had thyroid failure for 12 years -- they've written me letters and I can present those letters to you. "I will no longer be your physician because of what you did", like you didn't show up for your appointments. And I'll say, "You know I showed up for my appointments, why don't you tell me the real reason you're not seeing me." DR. ROYAL: Could you, when you've finished, see one of our staff members and arrange to provide us copies of the letters? MS. BROWN: I definitely can. I can show proof that physicians are not willing to address our health problems, they're running from us. I appreciate your concern and I hope that we can get together and work to face reality and go forward. DR. OLEINICK: That's what we're trying to do and any help you can provide us, particularly written documents, we will certainly look at. MS. BROWN: Thank you. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. The next speakers are Ms. Betty Freels and Ms. Mary Bunch. Welcome. BETTY FREELS MS. FREELS: Good morning. My name is Betty Freels and I was born in 1956 during Operation Peppermint, one of many intentional releases of Iodine-131 to the general public. I have lived in and around the Oak Ridge area all of my life and I developed thyroid disease before my 31st birthday. I began working for Martin-Marietta in 1985 and in 1989 was assigned full time to the sampling of hazardous waste. The results of the samples were given to my supervision, but not to me. I was never informed of the danger that would be related to this job. Since 1992, I have been harassed because of my testimony given in the whistleblower case of Charles Bud Vonadore and because one of my doctors is also a whistleblower. In early '92 to the present, the following diagnoses have been made by several area doctors as well as the Mayo Clinic, Emory University, H. Mack VanderVeer of Lexington, Kentucky, the Vanderbilt Clinic and the CDC. I have chronic fatigue syndrome, inflammatory arthritis, hypothyroidism, Meniere's disease, immunologic disorder, fibrositis, peripheral neuropathy, systemic lupus erythematosus, esophagitis and gastritis, positive TB skin test, heavy metal poisoning with mercury and nickel. Other heavy metals I have are uranium, lead, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, beryllium, antimony, germanium, strontium, thorium, molybdenum and cobalt, to name a few. There are others. Episodic hyper-calcimia and hyper- parathyroidism with bone damage, low lymphocyte levels, cardiac dysrhythmia with excessive PVCs which is pulmonary ventricular contractions, asthma, prolonged bleed time, hypertension, migraine headaches and mild thoracic scoliosis. I informed my supervisor of the problems I was having to deal with and I felt that my job was affecting my health. I asked to be removed from the haz waste sampling until my health could improve, but was denied. My supervisor stated that I need not worry, that, and I quote, "just because they call it hazardous waste doesn't mean it's hazardous to your health", unquote. The ORNL medical director was to gather data and make a decision on my workplace. That was three years ago and I'm still waiting on an answer. It is my belief that I was to be observed to see just how sick I would get. I am the first woman in a sampling group to do hazardous waste exclusively. I have been exposed to unknowns and not told the real nature of the waste, therefore preventing me the opportunity to use all protective equipment at my disposal. Because of this, I am now on long-term disability and for the past year and a half have been involved in a harassment and whistleblower case on my own. Little did I know my fate had already been sealed from birth through childhood with exposures to intentional experimental releases and into my adult life by exposure to hazardous, toxic radiation and heavy metals in the workplace. I am but one of many who feel their whole life has been one big experiment. Our heritage was one of family, culture and our land, but now it's changed to cancer, rare disease and early death. It may already be too late for my generation, but there are future generations to be considered. I would like to ask that the government fund independent studies on the living instead of using mortality rates. Help us with compensation and continuous health care instead of monitoring blood and urine until our death. Tell us what we've been exposed to so we'll know what to expect as the illnesses progress. Take care of the people that have been used as guinea pigs for so many years with clinics and concerned doctors, and stop the harassment and retaliation. Several generations have been proud to serve their country but now realize our government has been lying to cover up the past. I ask you, who can we trust. And I tell you sadly, no one. Thank you. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Thank you, Ms. Freels. Ms. Bunch, did you want to add to that? MARY BUNCH MS. BUNCH: I had radium rod treatments so that's what I'm here for, to talk about those. DR. OLEINICK: Well, it's within the same time, so do you want to go ahead? MS. BUNCH: Okay. During the years 1960 and '61, I was under the care of Dr. Lamar Knight, he is an ear, nose and throat specialist in Knoxville, Tennessee. I had always had problems with my ears and had been treated by our family physician since birth. When I was in the fourth grade, Dr. Van Hicks sent me to Dr. Knight for treatment. At that time, I already had a perforated eardrum from so many ear infections. Dr. Knight used radioactive radium rods as part of my treatment. We were never told of any side effects and permission was never requested to do the treatments. My mother was just told this is the treatment I was to receive and she really didn't have the knowledge or education to question it. I would go every three weeks for a treatment for approximately one year. There was one particular treatment with Dr. Knight put the rods in and left the room. He would always leave them in for about 20 minutes, but on this treatment, he left them in for a good period of time, approximately 40 to 50 minutes. That night, I was violently ill. My symptoms were vomiting and a headache so severe that I just can't describe how bad it was. My mother said I eventually began vomiting blood. My mother called Dr. Knight and he told us to meet him at Fort Sanders Hospital in Knoxville. Upon arrival, he had me to go to UT and I stayed there for one week. During this period of time, he didn't tell my mother and dad what he was looking for, but he did have a group of doctors that came in, because I can remember them being around my bed and, you know, discussing my chart and looking at me. Dr. Knight has passed away but Dr. Seals was in practice with him at that time and he is currently practicing at Fort Sanders. I would imagine he would also have been using the rods on patients, I don't know. Needless to say, I'm very scared of what might happen to me. I have no idea of the dosage that was used on me, I can't begin, you know, to tell you what it feels like to find this out in later years. I feel like I don't know where to turn for help or how to get to the bottom of it or what kind of treatment that I need. I want some answers and need to know what preventive steps to take so that I can detect cancer before it happens. I don't want to want until, you know, you get it. I mean, I guess it's like I said, just not knowing, you just feel like you're out in the middle with no help. I already have problems with my memory and in 1991, I went to Dr. Gary Neal in Oliver Springs concerning this. I told him about the treatments and he had me scheduled for an MRI. He told me that he was looking for tumors. There were none present, but I still have to be checked on a regular basis. I still have problems remembering things. There are large portions of my childhood I cannot remember. I have one brother and three sisters and they can recall happenings growing up that I have no recollection of. This saddens and frustrates me. It also makes it harder in my daily life at home and on the job, I just -- you know, when you can't remember much, you just say well it's just an age thing. But I'm just 42. What I'd like to know is, is a study going on now on people that have had these treatments? If one has already been done, then I'd like to know what the results are. I have, you know, questions like that and I'd like to know what steps I need to take in order to find out these things, so I'd know how to deal with any problems that I have. MS. FREELS: Plus, she has a son that's 14, that we'd like to know -- this is my sister -- and we'd like to know if there's any preventive thing we can do with him in case he starts having problems. DR. OLEINICK: Let me just start -- are you finished, so I can ask a question? MS. BUNCH: Uh-huh. DR. OLEINICK: What you're saying is that even today you're having trouble getting information? Can you give us a little more information on what your attempts have been to find out what happened exactly? MS. BUNCH: I think more the dosage and exactly what happened then, so that you would know what kind of steps to take now because I don't know if it was a high enough dosage or how it would affect -- what it affects, you know, what do I do, what kind of tests do I need to have on an annual basis or whatever. I just don't know anything about it. DR. OLEINICK: What steps have you taken up till now to obtain this information? Have you tried to gain access to your medical records? MS. BUNCH: Well, I went to Dr. Knight's office to just get a copy of my records and they had my records -- none of this was on file. They had thrown the records away up until that point. Now UT, I haven't tried to get the records from the hospital, but I'm sure that they keep their records, I don't think a hospital can throw them away, but -- I guess I need guidance, that's what I really need -- what to do and where to get everything. DR. ROYAL: You're certainly not alone. There are many people who would like answers to questions which are very important to them. Unfortunately it's very difficult to get those answers without being in -- Dr. Knight, was that what his name is? MS. BUNCH: Lamar Knight. DR. ROYAL: -- without being in Dr. Knight's office and watching how the procedure was done, I'm not sure how anyone could come up with a radiation dose. There have been some studies done on people treated with radium rods and the number of cancers that have been observed in that population is very small compared to the naturally occurring numbers of cancers. And in general, whatever doctors normally do to try to make sure that you don't get cancer is what you would do in someone with radium treatment. It's not clear that there's anything special that needs to be done. MS. BUNCH: More or less just have MRIs or whatever to be sure that you detect it at an early stage, is that -- DR. ROYAL: Yes. But even that, you know, how often should you have it done, should you even have it done. None of that is clear. DR. OLEINICK: I don't want you to think that we've forgotten about you, Ms. Freels. Let me just ask you, you mentioned being harassed over trying to find out information about what's happened to you. MS. FREELS: Yes. DR. OLEINICK: Can you give me a little more -- elaborate a little bit on what that has involved? MS. FREELS: I'm not sure what you're -- DR. OLEINICK: Well, you talked about -- describing all the health problems which are due to contamination in the workplace. MS. FREELS: Mostly heavy metal exposure. DR. OLEINICK: Right. And that you've been a whistleblower. MS FREELS: Yes. DR. OLEINICK: And you have been greeted with less than, say, an enthusiastic response. MS. FREELS: Yes. DR. OLEINICK: Are you still continuing this work? Are you still trying to bring it -- I mean obviously today you are, but I mean other than this hearing. MS. FREELS: No. I've been sick since '92 and I've had to take several short-term leave of absences. I've tried to work in between and last year I had to take long-term disability because I just can't function. DR. OLEINICK: Evidently -- your testimony was greeted with applause, evidently there are others in the audience who maybe share this experience. MS. FREELS: Yes. DR. OLEINICK: And this is part of an organized group who are trying to find information? MS. FREELS: No. I just wanted you to know what we're facing, the fact that I've been born into this. DR. OLEINICK: Right. MS. FREELS: My family is here, I have nowhere else to go. One physician that was very supportive and actually did metal testing and found it positive and was real concerned, actually after a number of months, when I went back to him, he said well, I've had several with this problem, you can either stay in your home or move away. That was his expert advice to me. Instead of, you know, let's see what we can do. And as far as eliminating these from my system, my kidneys cannot stand it. We did mobilization tests using a chelator and my kidneys bled and if I try it again, I will lose a kidney. So I'm sort of stuck. It's helped some people, but as far as my health is concerned, it won't help me. DR. OLEINICK: Well, thank you very much. We appreciate hearing from you. The next person is Ms. Margaret Jacobs. Ms. Jacobs, are you here? We'd like to hear from you, if you'd like to make a presentation to us. MARGARET JACOBS MS. JACOBS: Yes. I am Margaret Jacobs and I was married to Braxton B. Freeman, who died -- well, he died in '91, but he was a patient in ORAU, and he was in and out of the hospital for like 21 months. He had leukemia and our family physician that referred us to ORAU didn't think that he would live even until the next morning. But I'm here on behalf of ORAU to praise them for what they did do for my husband. When he went in, his white count was so high that they couldn't really go through the normal procedures before they put him in total body radiation. They did admit him to total body radiation as soon as they could do all the lab work that was necessary for them to do. He was in total body radiation, I don't remember how many hours that he was in total body radiation, but in receiving this treatment, he put in -- his leukemia was in remission, he was able to come out, go fishing, live a normal life for quite a period of time. There was another time when he also had to take body radiation the 21 months that he lived after we found out. He was employed with TVA and in one of the physicals they found that he did have leukemia. I have much praise for ORAU. First, the place that he took the total body radiation was a very comfortable, very attractive decorated place, it was just like your own living room, your own bedroom, which made it very nice, since he had to stay around the clock. The employees and the doctors there at ORAU gave him everything they could possibly give him. They had a very personal concern. Dr. Goswick was mostly his doctor and it wasn't just the treatment that he was trying to give him, but he made him very comfortable, he wanted to make him very happy. And really, Dr. Goswick, with the whole staff, went far beyond their call of duty. For instance, I'd like to give you just this one illustration. Dr. Goswick was going on vacation and he told my husband he'd be gone for a week and Dr. Edwards would take care of him. Well, my husband, that sort of upset him because he -- Dr. Goswick was his security blanket. So Dr. Goswick said, well, I'll tell you what I will do, after day shift leaves, I'll come in every day to see you. Well, I wasn't there at the time Dr. Goswick talked with him but I thought, while my husband was telling me, "well, he's just telling him that because he will see Dr. Edwards and he will like him and everything will be okay." But that wasn't true, Dr. Goswick did come in every day on his vacation. And not only that, the weekends that he was an inpatient there, he would come in every Saturday, he'd come in either before church or after church. And I can't give enough praise for ORAU for what they did. It really broke my heart to see them ever close down, and it wasn't just to us that they gave this kind of treatment, but I was in there -- well, in fact, the last six weeks before my husband died, I wasn't out of the hospital but twice. It was every patient that came in, they had such a personal concern. And with the treatment that they were able to give him there, it really made his life much easier, more comfortable the 21 months that he lived. I feel much indebted to ORAU and I feel indebted to the doctors and the staff there that gave their time. Even one lady down in the lab -- you sort of feel like they're your family because they have such a personal concern there and they want so much to do something for you, to cure your disease -- she knew at that time his appetite was just down to almost zero, but she knew that he loved crowder peas. So she goes home after a day's work, cooks some peas and brings them back to the hospital. I'm just most grateful for them. I mean I could never say that their treatment was bad in any way as far as the radiation was concerned, or as far as their care, professional care, was concerned, because they had a very loving concern and they were very dedicated to their profession. Not only were they very, very nice to him, but they were nice to me as his wife, they were nice to my whole family and they were nice to my friends, you know, as they came in. And I just want to take this opportunity to say that I'm very grateful for every person that had a part in providing ORAU for the patients there and for my husband, and for the service that was rendered and for the care that he did get there. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. I'm sure they're very grateful to hear some positive testimony, some praise of their work. May I just ask you a little more definitively, what year did your husband receive this treatment? MS. JACOBS: Okay, it was in September of '69 that he was a patient there and he lived 21 months from the time that we found out, and he was in and out of ORAU as an inpatient several times, twice with total body radiation. And he died May 23 of '91, he was 53 years and 11 months old when he died. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. DR. ROYAL: I also would like to thank you for coming. One of the things that the Committee is trying to do is to keep in mind that radiation is used in medicine and does help many people, and it's good to hear that your husband was helped. Thank you for coming. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. MS. JACOBS: Thank you for allowing me to. DR. OLEINICK: No, we're delighted that you came here. The next speakers are Ms. Dorothy McRight, Mr. Gary Litton and Mr. J. D. Lee. Good morning. That's okay, only one can speak at a time, you'll have to share two microphones. You'll divide your seven minutes up however you see fit. DOROTHY MCRIGHT MS. MCRIGHT: My name is Dorothy McRight, and I have a prepared statement I'd like to read. This may be a little long, but I'll read until I can stop. No one seemed to mind the hardships we endured coming to work on the Manhattan Project. This was Tennessee, the volunteer state and most of us had relatives and friends in the military service. We were told the work we would be doing would help to end the war. This was secret and we were not to discuss anything we saw or overheard because the enemy might be listening. The year was 1943 and the city behind the fence was being built where we would live and work until the war was over. Then the city became known as Oak Ridge, Tennessee. After the war ended, the Army moved out and a lot of the workers lost their jobs and were leaving to go back home. But being from east Tennessee, we felt we were already home, so we stayed. In the late 1950s, the Atomic Energy Commission funded a hospital in Oak Ridge, called the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies to provide cancer treatment using a form of therapy called total body radiation. Total body radiation was new and experimental in scope but was believed in trial to be beneficial to some forms of cancer. The primary goal was to get patients with a diagnosed cancer. The patients were required to sign an admittance agreement stating "some treatments may be experimental". Patients should have been told the truth upon their entrance to this hospital, but some were not. Now, enter patient number 111264; name, Woodrow W. Litton; age, 41; employed by Union Carbide at the K-25 plant. During a transfer from K-25 to Y-12, he had a physical exam at the medical division of the plant. During this exam, some pea-sized nodes were found under his arm. The doctor at the plant advised Mr. Litton to see his family physician, who referred him to a surgeon for a biopsy, which was diagnosed as lymphoma. The surgeon then referred him to ORINS for tests and evaluations. He signed the admittance agreement form May 10, 1961. On an outpatient note dated May 23, 1961, a doctor states there was some doubt on review of the sections of the node biopsy done at Oak Ridge Hospital on May 3, 1961, and he felt that it would be desirable to obtain another biopsy. We arranged for Mr. Litton to return on May 26, 1961 for an axillary node biopsy. The authority to operate form for removal of a left axillary note is the only consent form he ever signed at that hospital. At least, if he signed any other form, it was not included in his medical records. The biopsies were sent to five different doctors and all had a different opinion. One specialist at the University of Chicago stated that she had seen patients with nodes of this type left alone with treatment deferred and they were alive and well after ten years. We all wish. Woodrow Litton was a patient at ORINS for four years and seven months, with five hospital stays and numerous outpatient visits. During this time and without our knowledge, he was used in several experiments described in the Markey report. One doctor states on an outpatient note that Mr. Litton said he thought he'd maybe feel better if he had TBI. That seems so strange to us. Never ever having had TBI, why would he make such a statement. Even so, despite his being asymptomatic, he was given the benefit of TBI, 50 R dose on May 22, 1962. DR. OLEINICK: Ms. McRight, excuse me, but your statement is extremely important to us -- I don't want to downplay that, -- but we're going to be running out of time and you came with three people. I'm willing to extend the seven minute time because of the three of you, but I can't extend it forever. But I think since you've written this, it would be very helpful to us, since we have it here -- I don't think you need to read it all now. MS. MCRIGHT: Okay, that's fine, thank you. DR. OLEINICK: And if you have any other documentation, it certainly can be provided and we would certainly welcome it because this is very important for us to review. MS. MCRIGHT: I have a lot. DR. OLEINICK: Okay, well that's why I introduced the staff to you. So I don't know who is planning -- DAVID LEE MR. LEE: Good morning. My name is David Lee and I'm here for my law partner, J.D. Lee, who could not be with us this morning, and I'll keep my comments brief. I too have a written statement and I've got another document that I will file with you. But we have filed a lawsuit in federal court here, a class action, along with the law office of Melvin Belli, on behalf of the lady you've just heard from and her husband who died in 1965 at the age of 47. This lawsuit is based on a constitutional tort which part of the claims in that is lack of informed consent -- the people didn't know the exact nature of what they were being given. It alleges deception, it alleges violations of the Nuremberg Code, also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- just a number of violations. As you know, these claims happened much longer ago than what the statute of limitations would suggest would be able to be brought into court. But because of the deception, fraud, we are asking the Commission not to do anything that would keep these claims and these claimants from having their day in court. There was recently a decision, in the past month, by a federal judge in Cincinnati. I have that opinion and I'll file it with you. But which agrees with us that these people, at the least, should have their day in court and prove the fraud, deceit and so forth. So in summary, I appreciate that you've extended the time for me to talk and I'll file this and I ask that you all don't do anything that would prevent their day in court. (Applause.) DR. ROYAL: What specifically do you have in mind that you think that the Committee would do that would affect the legal proceedings? MR. LEE: Well hopefully you wouldn't do anything. I guess -- DR. ROYAL: Well, no, but you're cautioning us not to do something and I wanted to know what it was specifically you're cautioning us not to do. MR. LEE: Well, worst case scenario, you could say to the President, "Look, this happened a long time ago, why don't you step in and save the federal government some money and cut off these claims." I don't think you would do that, and I'm just asking you not to. DR. OLEINICK: That's not our position to do. I don't think we could do it even if we wanted to -- and we don't want to. MR. LEE: Of course. DR. OLEINICK: So I don't think that's going to happen. MR. LEE: Thank you for your kindness. DR. OLEINICK: I think what is going to happen in the court is going to be independent. It may -- the court may decide to read and to take into consideration any statements we make, but I don't think that's going to affect it. MR. LEE: Certainly. DR. ROYAL: The other thing that I would want to emphasize is any individual case would require a long period of time to hear the evidence on both sides. If you've looked at the charge of this Committee and the scope of what we're doing, it's very unlikely that we could do justice in any one particular case because we're not hearing the evidence from both sides. So I don't think that what the Committee is doing is going to have any direct effect on any of the legal proceedings. LINDA LITTON MS. LITTON: I'm Linda Litton. My husband, Gary, his father was married to Ms. McRight. Gary could not be here due to his health. We'll say that since obtaining his father's records in January of '94, his health has slowly declined. He has been diagnosed with congestive heart failure. He has panic attacks and the congestive heart failure, the doctor believes, was brought on by stress. Needless to say, losing your father -- I'm privileged, I still have mine -- but losing your father has to be traumatic anyway. And then almost 30 years later finding out, after reading your dad's medical records, that technically from the way it was surmised by he and some doctors, is that basically he was killed, he was radiated to death. He wanted it to just be known to the Committee, you have his notes, you will have his mother's notes and the attorney. He received Lanthanum-140, Iodine-123, 131, Cobalt-60, over 4600 Rs or more that they know of, nitrogen mustard, et cetera. He died October 30, 1965. On October 28 -- well, the last 25 days of his life, the doctor said "Mr. Litton is in grave, pitiable condition." Then why, on the 28th of October, the doctor said in a note, "Mr. Litton can no longer tolerate Cobalt-60 or TBI." Yet, on the very next day, the 29th, they planned to give him 2400 more rads of Cobalt-60, but they had to stop because his blood count was so low and he had labored breathing. At 4:20 a.m. approximately, the next morning, he died. If a man is this sick, it's just like oh, hey, why not, let's just go ahead, he's going to die, let's just give him -- zap him again and just see what happens. I'm upset because I've seen what this has done to my husband on a daily basis, I've seen what it's done to my mother-in- law. I was deprived of ever meeting my father-in-law, my two children were prevented from meeting their grandfather. And we just feel like, you know, we've all been cheated. DR. OLEINICK: I think we were all appreciative of you coming and telling us all this. And particularly of providing us with the written documentation, which is very helpful. Anything else that you can provide, please, this is certainly important to us. MR. LEE: Should I give this to Kristin or can I give it to you right now? DR. OLEINICK: Give it to Kris. DR. ROYAL: Just behind you. And we do have the Cincinnati court opinion, the Judge's opinion. MS. MCRIGHT: Thank you. MR. LEE: Thank you. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. I understand Dr. Morgan is here, Dr. Karl Morgan. Good morning, Dr. Morgan. DR. MORGAN: Good morning. DR. OLEINICK: Please -- you may have the microphone. KARL Z. MORGAN DR. MORGAN: Thank you. I usually face the audience when I talk and I feel a little awkward, but I'm honored to face the people before me. I was -- before the war, I was a cosmic ray physicist studying ionizing radiation coming into our earth from outer space from these nuclear reactions that are going on millions of light years away from the earth. And I was doing this research in cooperation with members of the faculty of Duke University. At the same time, I held a position as a member of the faculty of Lenoir Rhyne College. I joined the Manhattan Project under Dr. Compton in the early period, having had this experience of studying these radiations. I built the first geiger counters ever built in this part of the country and I had used these instruments in caverns deep underground, on top of Mount Mitchell, Mount Evans and so on. So I had quite a bit of experience in measuring the types of radiation that would be involved in the nuclear business. So, I became one of the first five health physicists in the world. Today, there are over 30,000 professional health physicists in this world. I became the -- I moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, actually it was not a town at the time, just the cornfields of Tennessee -- in September, 1943. And shortly after, I became Director of the Health Physics Division at Clinton Laboratories, which later became Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I held this position for 29 years. One of my major responsibilities as Director of this program at the Laboratory, was to set radiation protection standards, and to some extent, be responsible for the ethical and the proper use of ionizing radiation. There were no levels of maximum permissible exposure at the time. If we can have the first slide, as you can see, -- I hope you can see there -- there were extremely large allowable exposures. For example, back in the early period beginning in 1934 to '50, the permissible annual exposure was 52 roentgens per year. And then in 1934, the recommendation was 36; in 1949, we came down to 15, which we used for a number of years. And then we found out that was still too high, so in 1956, we came down to five rems per year, and more recently, as you know, in 1990, the permissible level was raised to two rem or two roentgens per year. The levels for members of the public were, of course, much lower in general, at least one-tenth, or no more than one- tenth of those allowed to the radiation workers. So in 1959, the level of a half a roentgen or half a rem per year was set and more recently in 1990, we dropped way down to a tenth of a roentgen per year for members of the public. Now, the only radiation risk that I knew of when I came to Oak Ridge was a little bit of information on the risks of the workers with radium. We knew that there was a so-called radiation syndrome in which the person, if he got very large exposure, say 1000 roentgens, he would be perhaps dead in a very short while. And we were very concerned about radiation erythema, threshold erythema as we called it -- the reddening of the skin after you received a considerable exposure. Well, since there were no levels of exposure other than these, we had to make our choices. First, we used 15 R per year for the laboratory and about a tenth of that for the public, and that went on for a number of years until we dropped down to 5 rem per year. There were no levels of maximum permissible exposure for radionuclides that might get into the body by inhalation or injection. I made a number of calculations and published the first paper, so far as I know, showing how one might calculate permissible exposure to radioactive materials in the air, water and food. This paper was, of course, classified for a number of years, but I finally got it published in 1947. As the years went by, I set up maximum permissible concentrations as best I could. In my first publication, for example, I had no information -- essentially no information at all. For example, plutonium does not exist normally on the surface of the earth because of its relatively short half-life of only 24,000 years. So there I had to use the data provided by Joe Hamilton at Berkeley, studies he had made on three rads. And there was no information on a number of radionuclides, so we had to do the best we could. We had the bear by the tail and we could not let it go. Yet it was winning the war and yet, we had this problem. So perhaps as a result of this work I did and these publications, I was made a member of the International Commission on Radiological Protection and of the National Council on Radiation Protection. These groups set the standards, internationally and nationally respectively, for exposure to the radioactive materials. I was not chairman of the total Commission, is what I meant to indicate, Chairman of the Internal Dose Committee of these organizations of which I became a member. And so we published a number of handbooks on so-called internal dose. That is, what is the exposure you get when you inhale or ingest these radioactive materials that are deposited inside the body. DR. OLEINICK: Dr. Morgan, I hate to interrupt you, but our time is a serious constraint in these proceedings. And what I'd like, since you have written comments, we'd like to have them in the record of course, but if you could bring your oral comments to a close in another minute or so, because there probably are some questions that we'd like to ask to you. DR. MORGAN: Thank you, Madam Chairman, that'll mean I'll have to leave out my talk, so I'll -- maybe I should end here then. DR. OLEINICK: Another minute or two. (Voices in protest from the audience.) DR. OLEINICK: I have no complaint about hearing Dr. Morgan speak, I assure you. My problem is the long list and that we do have a time constraint. So if we give Dr. Morgan some extra time, I want you to know that later on, we may have to steal some time from somebody else and I am reluctant to do that. Please continue. DR. MORGAN: Thank you, Your Honor. Not having the data that was needed, it occurred to me that if I knew where the stable elements went in the body; that is, if you know how much copper is in the food that you eat and in the water, you could calculate where the radioactive copper would go. So I got on the phone, got in touch with Dr. Isabel Tipton here at the University of Tennessee, and with the help of Mary Jane Cook, who traveled all over the United States collecting tissue samples -- that is, during autopsies, she would collect samples of thyroid or brain of kidney and freeze them and they were brought back to her and she analyzed them spectrographically determining the elements in the human body. If we could have the next slide, it shows some of the data that was collected by Isabel here at the university. I don't expect you to read it, but altogether she collected data on 44 different chemical elements and that was the most valuable information we had in setting permissible exposure levels. And during all these years, I was under extreme pressure from the military to provide information on how man would behave if exposed to large levels of radioactive material. That is, they had in mind to use radio-isotopes along with chemical weapons in warfare, and they needed to have this information. I resisted and opposed any use of this exposure to humans, but I did weaken and allow exposures on monkeys and apes, which I today regret, because some of them were rather cruel. We did, however, have three human studies going on that were conducted in the Health Physics Division, if I could have the next projection please. And these -- in this case then, we had the human studies that were conducted at our laboratory. We had, first of all, studies on phosphorus-32, little plaques which we placed on our arms and Bernie Fish and the five members of his group put radioactive iodine in their milk and drank it and got the data on excretion in urine and feces. And then he and Struxness worked with Dr. Sweet at the Massachusetts General Hospital, who they found was injecting uranium into a number of patients to get the information on excretion rate and the effects on the humans. So we cooperated on this program. Now recently, I got some information to the effect that Dr. Sweet was not using the stable uranium or U-238, which is almost stable, but he was using some U-233 and U-235. U-233 especially is very radioactive. So I got very worried. And if we can have the next slide -- I sat down and carried out some calculations. You can just go to the next slide, we won't have room for that. And I came then to these conclusions from what I just showed on the previous slide. First of all, I should say that I found that Dr. Sweet had been using doses up to 50 milligrams, but the reports did not state how much of it was U- 238, U-233 and U-235. So I made three different assumptions -- one that this material was 100 percent U-238, 100 percent U-235 and 100 percent U-233. In the first case, there was no problem, the U-233, that was what I thought he was using. In the second case though, there was a minor problem with a dose to the kidney, it was six times the permissible level we were allowing of our workers at the Laboratory, but as I expected, if he had been using doses as high as 50 milligrams of U-233, the doses would have been terrific, over 150,000 rems to the kidney and 110,000 rems dose to the bones. Then from what I just showed on the previous slide, I calculated the chemical risk and I found that there the dose would have been three times the allowable amount from a chemical perspective, for example, it didn't matter what kind of radio- isotope in that case. Well, I was a member of these committee, the ICRP and NCRP, for 20 years. But I was not a very good politician. The International Commission on radiology, of course, controlled the ICRP, and at that time I was trying to reduce diagnostic exposure, so I became a bit unpopular there. And then I was very worried about the high levels of tritium and plutonium and published papers showing that they should be reduced. So they promoted me -- I'll put that word in quotes -- to emeritus member, which I am now, with no vote. And since that time, if we can have the last slide, things have gone a bit awry in some cases. Now tritium, unbeknown to most people, I think is one of the more hazardous materials, certainly the more dangerous material, because the radiation establishment is discharging hundreds of thousands of curies -- not millicuries -- of tritium into the environment from some of these plants, per year. And as you can see there, the values that the ICRP set over the years have vacillated. At first they had -- when I was there, we set it at five times ten to the minus six microcuries per cc in air and one-tenth in water and then the ICRP went up for air up to 22 and then now down to eight. Then for strontium, which is one of the more dangerous radioactive materials, you see that it went from three times ten to the minus tenth to 16. Then I guess they got a little scared and came down to 5.4 and so on. And I feel that one of the biggest problems in the area of humans as radiation guinea pigs is that the international committees that set these standards, in many respect are more concerned that they do not hamper and injure the radiation industry that's having such a great time. So when it comes to a decision on the important radionuclides like tritium and strontium, they have vacillated a great deal, and for plutonium in particular, which I don't show, the present levels are too high, in some cases by a factor of 200 or more. Thank you. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Well, I'm happy to admit that I was wrong in trying to stop you early. DR. MORGAN: Madam Chairman, you have to talk loud because one of the sins of being 87 is you can't hear very well. DR. OLEINICK: I'm sorry. I said that I'm happy to admit that I was wrong in trying to stop you early and I'm glad that we heard the full testimony. I think we probably have a couple of questions. Henry, do you want to start? DR. ROYAL: I think that we're all grateful to you for giving the radiation protection community the conscience that you gave them. The question that I have for you is if we look at the -- do cost/benefit analysis -- there are many people who argue that the amount of money that we're willing to spend to protect people from radiation risk is much greater than the amount of money that we're willing to protect them from other kinds of medical risks. And the problem that you get into is if you have a limited amount of money in order to protect people from risk and you want to make people as healthy as you can make them, if you spend that money in an area where you're not getting a lot of health benefit, you don't have that money to spend in another area where you would get more health benefit. So I'm curious about your opinion of where the balance is in radiation protection, whether or not you think that the amount of money that's spent on radiation protection is an appropriate amount or that the limited resources argument just is not a valid argument. DR. MORGAN: Yes, balancing the benefits against the risks has been a continuous problem with ICRP and NCRP. During the war, we had to weight the balance in favor of winning the war and allowing some things that would not be acceptable under peace time conditions. But as time has gone on, we have found that we're not concerned just with skin erythema and not concerned just with very large doses where a person dies shortly thereafter, but there are serious effects, especially malignancies, at very low doses. And so it develops that various types of leukemia show up after, in some cases, as short a period as four or five years, but the mid-period around 15, and you still get a few at 30 years. But the solid tumors don't begin to really peak until you get 30 or 35 years, and there's still quite an excess from the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the other studies which we've examined. So, in answer to your question, we certainly must keep in mind that we have only a certain amount of funds in the purse and we have to use part of it for other health problems as well as for other conditions. And so that has always been kept in mind, but I feel that at the present time, the cancer coefficient, that is the cancers per rem, per unit of exposure, that it's still a bit higher than conceded by the international groups, higher perhaps by a factor of five. It's down now to a factor of about five times ten to the minus four fatal cancers per person rem, and so it should be down by a factor of about five. But then I think we begin then to try to balance the risks of money we would spend for other health purposes. So I think the latest reduction by the ICRP and NCRP in permissible exposure levels was very much warranted and overdue and now the data shows there's still another factor of five they need to go down, and then I think we begin to have to look very carefully into how much money we're going to spend for various other effects besides radiation-induced malignancies. DR. OLEINICK: Dr. Morgan, I would like to ask you, because of your long history in this field and out at Oak Ridge, if you can help us to recall whatever you can about how some of these experiments that occurred at Oak Ridge were decided upon. For example, the first plutonium injection experiments took place at Oak Ridge. I'd like to know if you recall what kinds of deliberations went on and how the decision was made to conduct this experiment, and what role, of any, the AEC's Human Use Committee played in that decision. DR. MORGAN: Well I was very far down the line in -- DR. OLEINICK: I know you weren't directly involved, I understand that, but -- DR. MORGAN: We got all our money from Washington, but my job was to try to get as much as I could for research for about 200 people working in this field carrying out various studies. We had staff meetings of health physicists and medical people every few months in various places, so I heard and took part in these discussions. But as far as I was concerned, I was not allowing any human studies at our Laboratory other than those three that were mentioned there. I did overhear about one with plutonium in our laboratory, this African-American that -- well, Dr. Stone, the Associate Director under Compton, whose office was next to mine -- came into my office one morning very excited and said "Karl, you know this black man that had this automobile accident, multiple fractures, we gave him a large dose of plutonium and he's disappeared, we don't know where he is." And so that was just about as close as I got to the discussions on ethics. I had many conversations with Stafford and Shields Warren, both of those, and with Dunham and others, on the propriety of using humans for getting the data that I needed in setting these levels of permissible exposure. But I prepared a number of memoranda -- I haven't been able to find any of them in my file -- in which I indicated the conditions under which one would or should allow human studies. And I remember one of them, I indicated the levels should be such that they would be comparable with those of allowable exposure at our Laboratory, the permissible body burden, as we called it, that there should be proper consent of all properties involved, and that there should be no known injury or pain caused the recipient, and so on. But as time went on, I learned of studies of Eugene Saenger at the -- in Cincinnati, and Clarence Lushbaugh at Oak Ridge, which were very frightening and very sad from my perspective. Here I felt that it began to reflect on things that went on in Germany during the war. And so the possibility of doing these things was never discussed in my presence -- that is, high exposures -- though I heard about, in these discussions, of some studies in which prisoners had been given very large doses which were very harmful to them. And I think in some of these I expressed my horror and disgust at these approaches. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Morgan, we very much appreciate your coming to talk to us today. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: We would like to take a very short break at this time. I think those of us up here certainly need one, and probably you do. If we can, can we just limit it to five minutes and come back. (A short recess was taken.) DR. OLEINICK: We're ready to begin with group two for the public participants. I understand that the first person on the list has canceled and so we will begin with Dr. Gary Madsen. Is Dr. Madsen here? The seven-minute rule still holds. I'll remind everybody, in case you didn't hear, we're giving everybody seven minutes. You can use that time for presentation and any time that's left in the seven minutes, we may wish to ask questions. GROUP TWO GARY MADSEN DR. MADSEN: My name is Gary Madsen and I'm a sociology professor at Utah State University. For the past several years, my colleague Susan Dossett and I have been studying the psycho-social effects of radiation exposure on both American Indian and non-Indian uranium mill workers. There certainly have been revelations over the past year concerning victims of radiation experimentation during the cold war era. Throughout this period, there were also thousands of uranium workers who may have been exposed to radiation hazards without their knowledge. It has been documented that working conditions contributed to health problems among some uranium workers. In 1990, Congress enacted the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which provided compassionate payment to miners, nuclear test site workers and atomic down-winder victims, for illnesses associated with nuclear exposures. However, other nuclear workers, including mill workers, research workers, fuel enrichment and fabrication workers, uranium truck haulers and above-ground uranium miners, were not included as part of RECA. Among these excluded groups, we conducted a study of 87 American Indians and 117 non-Indian uranium mill workers from eight uranium mills. While the respondents worked from the 1940s through the 1980s, the majority worked prior to 1970. These mills all produced uranium oxides, or yellow cake, as a final product. There are many hazards associated with uranium milling, including radon daughters, uranium-238, uranium-234, thorium-230 and radium-226. In addition, exposures could include silicates of uranium ore, yellow cake, vanadium where processed, and chemicals such as acids and solvents. Indians were included in the research because they have never been studied as a distinct group, and because they are known to have a low incidence of cigarette smoking behavior. The major findings of our study include the following: The majority of workers were never informed about the hazards of radiation associated with their work. In fact, among the Indians, there was no word for radiation until recently. There was widespread recognition of being exposed to uranium and/or yellow cake dust, at least at certain times and in certain jobs. A majority of workers used respiratory protective devices, although a significant minority noted that they wore them only infrequently or did not consider them to be effective. Almost half of the millers believed they had health problems related to their mill work; however, the Indians were more than twice as likely as the non-Indians to feel they had health problems related to the mill work. The most often reported health problems were non- malignant respiratory diseases and respiratory symptoms such as shortness of breath and persistent cough. Over 50 percent of the respondents reported one or more respiratory problems. The Indians who reported respiratory problems were largely non-smokers or had only smoked lightly, while the non-Indians were moderate to heavy smokers primarily. There was also evidence that the non-Indians were likely to attribute respiratory problems to their smoking. Almost 25 percent of the workers reported anxiety related to their physical health problems and almost 20 percent reported depression. The Indians were twice as likely as the non-Indians in experiencing anxiety and depression concerning their health. In addition to working at uranium mills, almost 40 percent lived near uranium mill tailings and over 20 percent lived near uranium mineways. Furthermore, over 20 percent of the respondents' children played near or on uranium mill tailings or mineways. The Indians were twice as likely to have lived within one-half mile of uranium mineways and over four times more likely to have lived near uranium mill tailings. Half of the workers reported bringing materials home from the work sites which may or may not have been monitored for radiation. For example, one worker brought home used canvas vent bags -- these are used to filter the air in the yellow cake area -- which his wife had sewn together for mattress pads. He worried about possible contamination from these vent bags in his home. Our recommendations to the Committee based upon these findings: 1. Epidemiologic studies of uranium mill workers need to be conducted and must include American Indian workers who are known to have low incidence of cigarette smoking. The most recent epidemiologic studies of uranium mill workers are now 15 to 20 years old and they did not include American Indians or smoking behavior data. Mortality and morbidity studies of uranium mill workers, including American Indian workers need to be conducted. Previous research of mill workers have included mortality studies. While this is important, we feel morbidity studies should be conducted in order to examine other possible occupationally and environmentally related illnesses presently experienced by this population. Medical screening of uranium mill workers, including American Indian workers, need to be conducted to determine what health problems presently exist. There is evidence that many mill workers are worried about their health and medical screening would help to establish whether their fears about health problems are supported. Medical specialists need to be available to examine uranium mill workers who live in rural areas and on American Indian reservations. The majority of the respondents in our study lived in areas which lacked medical specialists such as pulmonary physicians. Specialists need to be part of any medical screening and need to be available to health providers. Uranium mill workers need to be considered for compensation under RECA. Because of evidence indicating a lack of risk notification to risk workers about uranium hazards, compensation as a group under RECA needs to be considered. Workers who were not informed about risks concerning their employment were unable to make informed judgment regarding personal protective equipment and their work behavior. And lastly, program funding needs to be made available for education programs to inform uranium mill workers and others about occupational and environmental hazards and possible health problems associated with the uranium industry. Many of the workers are worried about their past exposures, both on the job and in their living environment. This program would provide needed information upon which to make informed judgments concerning future public policy. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. I think our seven minutes are up. Do you have any -- go ahead. DR. ROYAL: One comment. Thank you, Mr. Madsen. We'd be very grateful if you would provide your data to our staff. We have people in Washington working now on a chapter that includes material on the mill workers and the miners, and this will be very useful to us. DR. MADSEN: I presented it before, and we have one article that will be coming out that I'll also present to you. DR. ROYAL: Thank you. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. Next, Mr. Richard Sheldon. Mr. Sheldon, thank you very much -- please. RICHARD SHELDON MR. SHELDON: Thank you. Just a brief synopsis of my experience. In the late summer of '66, I was admitted to UT Hospital for what appeared to be appendicitis. When they cut me open, they found a growth that was diagnosed as Hodgkins disease. I was treated at UT Hospital with nitrogen mustard and x-ray treatments which my body did not tolerate. At that time, they pulled me out of the hospital, my parents approached a doctor for the American Cancer Society, he said take him home, make him comfortable, he'll be lucky to live six months. My parents started grasping at straws. My surgeon knew of Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies, which later became Oak Ridge Associated Universities, experimental cancer treatment there. He talked them into taking me as a patient. I was treated with Cobalt-60 for approximately two months, give or take. The only thing I can say is sitting here I thank the doctors for taking me as a patient, I thank them for the treatments. I was treated with respect, as an adolescent I was told what they thought I could understand on it. I have nothing but respect and admiration for them there. I'm alive, and thank you. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. We're very happy that you're here and testifying to us. MR. SHELDON: Thank you. I am too. DR. OLEINICK: I think it's very important, as Dr. Royal said earlier, radiation seems to be getting a bad name and in some cases maybe it needs to have a bad name. But we must all recognize that radiation plays a very important role in the treatment of cancer and certain other diseases as well. And when done properly, it's a life saver. MR. SHELDON: Yes, it is. DR. OLEINICK: And I think you're here to tell us that. Any questions? DR. ROYAL: Thank you for coming. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. MR. SHELDON: Thank you for having me. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Ms. Janice Stokes. Thank you, Ms. Stokes. JANICE STOKES MS. STOKES: Thank you. I've come to you today to tell you my story. I've lived in the first half of my life downstream of Oak Ridge Nuclear Weapons Facility and the second half of my life has been lived downwind of the Oak Ridge Operations Site. Until I did research for a cell biology class in college, I never knew what radiation would do, nor did I have any idea of what went on at Oak Ridge, at the plant. I just knew it was a place where people got paid pretty good and everything was secret. Oak Ridge is a bastion of secrecy, and it remains so today. That you are here is a very good step in openness and adding credibility to our government, and thank you for being here. The phrase, quote, "no immediate danger to the public" -- that will be a familiar sound to those in this room who read or listen to TV and radio news. The spill of strontium-90 into the Clinch River in the mid-1980s is a good example. The city of Kingston shut down its water supply for only one day, but the event of leakage lasted from November through January the following year. The state regulations on water are lacking in up-to-date requirements adequate to detect such poisons in the water. The state of Tennessee only requires metals testing every five to six years and the main test on public water is for bacteria. Tennessee is ranked in the top five of the worst polluted states in the nation, and DOE has contributed to that dubious distinction. Several hazardous and nuclear waste incinerators and smelters of radioactive metals are springing up in our area, spewing metals and gases into the air in a valley where the air is usually trapped between the Cumberland mountain range and the Smoky mountains and still occurring at DOE Oak Ridge operations are continuous leaks, spills, underground water contamination, flush or flood situations where the holding ponds overflow and that eventually ends up in the Clinch River. The river is part of the aquifer and the water supply for much of the southeast, especially for those people living in Kingston, which is downstream who have never been told that there may be something in their water that may harm them. If you look around most any neighborhood downstream, around Kingston or downwind in Anderson and Knox counties, there will be streets along which almost every house has been touched by cancer, many rare cancers, or heart disease, strokes and other life-threatening diseases. A couple of generations have died off since the '40s and '50s and now my generation, the baby boomers, and those who didn't make it to middle age and even younger are dying of brain cancers, kidney and liver cancers, ALS and leukemias. And there is so much thyroid disease here that there is enough business for surgeons in Knoxville to specialize only in thyroid surgery. We have amputee clubs here, we have young men and teenage boys now who have lupus and are in the Lupus Chapter here and probably ALS cluster illnesses, not to mention many teachers expressing concern about the increase of learning disabled children in their classroom in the past few years. Speaking personally, I have illnesses that I believe can be attributed to living downstream and downwind. As a child in the '50s, I was an avid wader in the sediment, I swam, skied and drank the water just a few miles downstream from Oak Ridge, and now I live downwind -- I already said that. I have been diagnosed with the following, which is metal poisoning, with evidence of elevation of mercury, uranium, cadmium, strontium, arsenic, lead at higher than expected levels, fibrositis, chronic fatigue, inflammatory arthritis, immune deficient peripheral neuropathy, neurological disorders, osteomalacia, arthritis, gastritis with erosion ulcers, esophagitis, gum disorders, prolonged bleed time. Finding medical care is difficult for me. Physicians in the area and region are very reluctant to diagnose or even verify another doctor's diagnosis if it relates to environmental or occupational disease. They're afraid because retribution is a real threat and they claim ignorance of how to diagnose and treat such illnesses. I'm going to cut this short. I would like for you to find secret order number 0521, which may have directed physicians practicing medicine around any nuclear site to refrain from diagnosing environmental or industrial related illnesses. This is my second request. The first request was to Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary in 1994. I believe that the people in the area surrounding Oak Ridge reservation have been and continue to be chronically exposed to radiation and chemical releases and that the intentional releases, including those between 1948 and 1952 which spread atomic bomb fallout at Oak Ridge at or near ground level, have made me a human radiation experiment. I want my government to provide complete and competent health care and provide experts in toxic poison to help the people here find out what's wrong with them and to treat them and help make what life they live as good as possible. I want the polluting to stop, for future generations to be safe from harm from our own people. And I want the government and its contractors to face their responsibilities and to take care of the problems that it has created. Thank you very much. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. Henry. DR. ROYAL: You mentioned a secret order number -- I didn't get the order number. MS STOKES: Secret 0521. DR. ROYAL: Can you tell us more about what you know about that document? MS. STOKES: The document has been written about in the New York Times, the possible existence of it. There have been references to the document, references leading up to the creation of it and also references that they were in compliance, but the actual order hasn't been, evidently, located. Again, it was written about in the New York Times in an article, so you can read that and I do have a copy of it if you'd like to have it. DR. OLEINICK: Yes, that would be helpful. DR. ROYAL: Yeah, I would like to have a copy of it. What did the order actually say? MS. STOKES: I haven't seen it, but supposedly it does say that for doctors practicing medicine around nuclear weapons sites to refrain from diagnosing people with illnesses and relating them back to the nuclear weapons industry. DR. ROYAL: Where did the order come from? Was it the Atomic Energy Commission, or what was the source of it? MS. STOKES: I believe the AEC was the source of it. DR. ROYAL: And you've also -- you were the second person to make reference to retribution here. Do you know of any cases of retribution? MS. STOKES: What I believe to be retribution against Dr. William Reed in Oak Ridge because he identified -- he only asked a question, was there something in the environment that was causing his patients to be sick. He did preliminary tests which were very true to protocol and identified elevated metals in some of his patients. And once he raised this flag, he became an object of what I consider -- this is my opinion -- a smear campaign to discredit him. And he is Board certified in one or two different disciplines. So you may check with him on his credentials. DR. OLEINICK: Yes, I think that would be very helpful. We're trying to come to grips to understand what's going on better, and so the more concrete information you can provide to us, the better we can do our job. MS. STOKES: I have had physicians tell me that they would not get involved, they were afraid, they have to make a living. I have had them tell me "I have to make a living here and I don't want to move and I'm not going to get involved" because they're afraid of retribution. DR. OLEINICK: I can understand that. But, as I said, to the extent that you can provide us with whatever concrete information -- it's very hard for us to work with anecdotal. To the extent that we can have it, that would be helpful. MS. STOKES: I do have some documentation and I'll be glad to provide it to you. DR. OLEINICK: Please. Thank you very much. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Okay, the next speaker is Ms. Shirley Rippetoe. SHIRLEY RIPPETOE MS. RIPPETOE: I have some notes but I'm going to try not to read them. DR. OLEINICK: Speak into the -- MS. RIPPETOE: My name is Shirley Rippetoe and I live in Nashville, Tennessee, and I was born March 27, 1946, and my mother went through Vanderbilt prenatal clinic and they had like a sliding scale for people to pay, and so that's why she went through the clinic, and of course she went there too because they had an excellent reputation and it was a fine hospital. In 1994, it was on the television and my sister called me and everybody wanted me to know, did I know that they had radiation experiments and this was the time I was born, and my family was really worried about me. Well, I let it go on and on and I finally checked into it and talked to a lady by the name of Carolyn Wilson at Vanderbilt Hospital. She was very informative and sent me out some consent forms to get my mother's medical records. So I went down there instead of having them mailed to me, and Ms. Wilson handed me my form and when she did, she said, "This is what you'll be very interested in, is when your mother was given the radiation isotope," and the date. I thanked her, and when I left, I guess it more kind of set in with me and I had to pull off the side of the road and cry because it kind of got to me. I know that my mother had ovarian cancer in the early part of 1963, I think it was, or '64. And I knew that I had always been kind of sickly and I had troubles with my legs hurting and my back and about ten years ago, I found out that I had a mild form of spina bifida and I knew that when I was coming up as a child, I bruised very easily and that they would always, if I didn't take care of myself, get infected. I've been in the hospital for that. They would like set up blood poisoning or so. I know that my great concern too is that -- not just for myself, but as I had my children, my oldest daughter was born with tumors on her arm and on the top part of her arm and her back. And she had to have treatment. At that time, me and my husband lived in Alabama and I had to bring her back and forth to a specialist on Hayes Street in Nashville, where they shot her with injections and like hot ice treatments. And the poor little thing, when I'd get her home, I'd have to -- in a few hours time I'd have to soak whatever she had on because from her arm especially, they was able to get rid of this one and this one but in a few days after she was born, they got so bad on her left arm that they couldn't do surgery, they said they'd have to do treatments, extended treatments, and she's always had a low immune system, she's always sick. A few years ago, her specialist found out that she had some kind of blood disorder called thiocemia (ph), I believe they said it was. My son has had some health problems, they've just been sick. And my younger daughter, a few years ago -- she's married, she's 21 -- she lived in Texas at the time and I didn't know it because she didn't want to worry me, and I was talking with her the other day and she told me that they had to do some kind of, like a blood transfusion on her a few years ago because she had some kind of infection in her blood, that it was rare or something, you know, they had to filter out her blood. So this concerned me, especially after I found out about all of this. And it worries me about my children's children because like my oldest daughter, her little son is sick all the time too. I know that the substance, the radioactive iron that stays in your body 225 days, the iron-59. And 12.5 years for the iron-55. So naturally I'm concerned about this for me and my family and my children's children. And I feel like this has probably been some of the reasons why I've been sick a lot and never knew it, because like I said, I just always accepted things and I hardly ever go to the doctor because I'm not the type that runs to the doctor for the least little thing. But I thank God we have doctors that can take care of us. I don't know why my mother was given this because I knew she didn't have a medical reason to be given this iron, she was in good health and she went through the clinic only because, you know, to get the medical care for me. And since this all came out too, I found out that my sister has a hole in her spine, my younger sister, and she was egg at that time, but she came a few years later. As I dig a little deeper into this, I found out that some of my older brothers and sisters might have been exposed to it too because they went to one of the schools that it was given to school children. My sister's oldest -- well, her only son is fighting for his life, he has liver cancer they found out, and he's only 36, a few weeks ago. And he won't live. They opened him up and tried to -- because the liver will rejuvenate itself and they wanted to try to save his life and everything because he has a family, but it was already spread to his pancreas just in a short time. And so, I just wanted to, you know, let you know these few things and I feel like since all this has been brought out, maybe this is why my family has had some of the medical things wrong with them. I know that my mother or no other mother would take anything to hurt their baby, not take it orally. They were going through this clinic because they thought they were getting a cheaper scale and these people were helping them, and they had a lot of faith, and that's what you should be able to do to your doctor, just like your priest or anyone you go to talk to. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. I realize that this is very difficult for you to come here and tell us this, but I think it's important that you did. May I just ask you, did your mother ever talk to you at all about what her experience was with the clinic, anything that she did? Did she ever mention anything? MS. RIPPETOE: My mother was told that she was getting excellent care and she was getting it cheaper, and she used to laugh and tell me -- she praised Vanderbilt. And she's no longer living, but I know she used to tell me that they would give her something to drink in a form of, like they called it a cocktail, and told her to drink it and that it would help her and her baby. DR. OLEINICK: Well, I think that it's very important. I hope you'll allow us to have a copy of the documents and any other information that you have about this event, because of course, we are looking into what happened at Vanderbilt. And any information that you would have also about -- was it your brother or sister who was -- MS. RIPPETOE: I have some older siblings, and all they were worried about was me. So as I kept hearing more about it, I found out that the school that they attended was giving dosage to children, so my brother who I spoke with about a week or so ago -- I told him he needs to check into it because there's no way I could check into it for him. DR. OLEINICK: Right. MS. RIPPETOE: But I know over the last few years, he has had liver problems, nothing severe yet, but his enzymes they called it, and something else, was too high. And like I said, my sister went to the same school, and her son has it and she's had a lot of medical problems. DR. OLEINICK: Well, we appreciate very much -- and again, I reiterate, what is going to be most helpful to us in addition to your own testimony today is any documented evidence that you have. And particularly if your brother or other siblings have -- if there is any documentation available about their involvement in these iron uptake studies. That would certainly be extremely helpful to us. MS. RIPPETOE: Okay. DR. OLEINICK: This is your original, you probably don't want us to have this one. But we can make a copy. MS. RIPPETOE: I'd like to say I thank y'all for being here. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. MS. RIPPETOE: It's kind of hard for me to speak in front of a bunch of people. DR. OLEINICK: You did very well. DR. ROYAL: That's why we have you sitting with your back to the people. (Laughter.) DR. OLEINICK: You did extremely well. Thank you so much. The next speaker is Mr. Bill Clark. BILL CLARK and ROBERT DON JONES MR. CLARK: Well, I don't know where to start. I was in an accident in 1958. MR. JONES: My father, who is also Robert Don Jones, was in an accident in '58 and he died in '73. They kept him in ORINS hospital, they kept giving him a little white pill, they had him with TB. None of the rest of my family wasn't checked -- a little white pill all the time. But then he had lung cancer and died. They also give him 26 Cobalt treatments at UT, and from '58 to '73, he was sick all the time. When he got radiated and after he got able to go back to work, they put him right back in hot spots. The records, I can't find them. I don't know whether -- the records got burned up, supposedly, at ORINS hospital. DR. ROYAL: What was the nature of this accident in 1958? MR. JONES: Criticality in '58 at Y-12. MR. CLARK: There was a 55-gallon drum went critical with uranium. MR. JONES: I believe that's the only one at Y-12. DR. OLEINICK: And this was at the Oak Ridge facility? MR. JONES: Yes, ma'am. MR. CLARK: This has been an experience ever since then. MR. JONES: They call Mr. Clark back all the time for blood, also my dad, blood and bone marrow all the time. And they had to go back. It's kind of hard to talk about it because the only thing I -- I just watched him die, go right down to bone. And I think they used him for a guinea pig. MR. CLARK: And they harassed me and belittled me for several years. MS. KITTRELL: Can I say something? DR. OLEINICK: Sure. MS. KITTRELL: One of the things Mr. Clark told me -- my name is Jackie Kittrell and I'm a public interest attorney here in this area -- one of the things Mr. Clark told me early on was that they had to settle their claim against the company very early, like within a year of the accident, and of course at that time, the acute radiation syndrome had subsided and they had no actual symptoms or injury. So they settled for a fairly low amount of money, but with the promise of free medical care for the rest of their lives. Now what they found out, and one of the reasons why Mr. Clark is upset about this, is that what was free medical care was in effect monitoring at ORINS and then ORAU for the rest of his life. He has watched -- all of the eight that were involved actually survived, but he's watched them die one by one. They've all had cancer, including him. His is in remission right now. I don't know how many are surviving, I think there's one -- is there one other? MR. CLARK: There's three. MS. KITTRELL: Three survivors out of the eight. They've all had cancer. Mr. Jones' father was the first one to die, almost exactly 15 years to the day after the exposure, of leukemia. At no time did ORINS ever say "You have cancer, it may be related to your radiation exposure." In fact, what Mr. Clark and Mr. Jones told me is that the medical unit there went out of their way to tell them how nothing that ever happened to them was caused by radiation. And it was just a continual monitoring. In fact, one of the words Mr. Clark used was it was like Dracula at the blood bank. They would go and give blood and go and give blood. At one time, he said he didn't want to do that any more and they called and berated him -- they had a researcher call him and berate him for not doing it. And he finally offered to sell them some blood, thinking that would just make them go away. And they said okay, how much. MR. CLARK: This went on all day. DR. ROYAL: So how much was it? (Laughter.) MR. CLARK: Five hundred dollars for one vial. They wanted two. MS. KITTRELL: The other real interesting thing about this is several of the men were not put back into radiation work after this accident. They were told they had accumulated their lifetime dose. What they did to them was put them into mercury. And Mr. Clark was one of the lucky people who waded up to his elbow in flowing mercury that was leaking at Y-12. There's also a whole host of other contaminants out there, including the fact that the buildings themselves and everything in them are made out of asbestos products, because of the fire hazard. So radiation is only one of the factors, but this is really what the ORINS and ORAU wanted to monitor them for. And he thinks, and Mr. Jones does too, that it's a form of experimentation when you have induced people into participating into a follow-up, telling them that it's medical care and that it's for the rest of their life. MR. CLARK: They wouldn't even buy you a pair of glasses. MR. JONES: My dad worked 20 years and then when he died, he was 54 years old, just turned 54, and my mother couldn't draw his pension. And also had to pay $4000 to get him out of UT over here, which they was supposed to have paid. MR. CLARK: I just got through with one round of experiments out there again, and it goes on about once or twice a year. But when it comes time to buy a pair of glasses or put a nickel out, they won't spend one penny. But we're supposed to go along -- DR. ROYAL: One of the things that -- we're sort of hearing two different things. Dr. Madsen and some of the other speakers today talked about an epidemiology study or monitoring studies of people who've been exposed to radiation. And now we're hearing two people testify -- or at least one individual testifying -- that just being monitored doesn't accomplish anything necessarily and that many people -- that might not be the solution for all people. So it's sort of a mixed message that we're getting. MR. CLARK: Well they harassed me and belittled me and they finally eliminated me, they laid me off in '65 after keeping my salary $113 a week. I couldn't find a job. Tried to join the Air Force, they wouldn't have me. MS. KITTRELL: It did accomplish one thing, this monitoring -- it made several millions of dollars for the institutions who did the monitoring and it got probably several people Ph.D.s and lots of accolades in their peer group. But what it did for these people for whom the monitoring was supposedly done is unclear, and in fact, they weren't really reported back to at all about what the results were. MR. CLARK: They said they couldn't be a monetary value on the information that they got from us, it would be impossible. It's ongoing, they still get information, they get blood. Every time they call us, we go out there, we're compensated nothing, never have been, not one nickel. But they say the information is invaluable. They had a clean cut accident with gamma penetrating body. No explosion. My exposure was 68 rad. His daddy's was 335 rad and Wagner got 395 rad. And after the accident, the limits were raised. His was supposed to have been terminal and he lived for awhile, and they raised it to 1000 because of this accident. Then they come up and settled it and forced us into a settlement, that you either take this or get nothing. And told me "if you don't like your job, you can leave". I settled for $5000 and I have to put up with this for a lifetime of blood. DR. OLEINICK: I think we share your concern. I think there's clearly some -- some answer has to be found here. But I think what we can do at the moment is try to evaluate whatever documentation is available, and in addition to your oral testimony. So again, I guess I'm sounding like a broken record, but what would be most helpful to us is to have whatever written documentation you have about this event and your comments on it is fine. If you can provide that to us, it would be extremely helpful. MR. CLARK: Our case is documented. The people in the midwest that I keep hearing about that think they might have been irradiated, what are you going to do if you treat somebody like me that has a documented case here -- this is our accident right here -- I mean with doses from each man, what they got. And the people in the midwest might have been irradiated and they treat us like this, you know. I really haven't ever saw anything like it, you know. I just couldn't believe our government would do something like this, you know. DR. OLEINICK: Well -- MR. JONES: I couldn't find any records. They supposedly was burned up, the room caught on fire and burned up. MR. CLARK: They put his daddy into one of the hottest, nastiest places to work when we went back to work, that I've ever seen in my life, 120 degrees, wading in mercury. They kept us home from work for nine months, about nine months. And we were allowed to go back to work half a day, half a day at a time, you know. Then they finally enticed me into taking a weekly salaried job, which was a mistake. Told me my hourly job would be laid off. DR. OLEINICK: Mr. Clark, I hate to interrupt you because I think what you're saying is really very important. But the time is running on. If you could please provide us with that information and we do have your testimony today. And we're really very grateful that you've come to talk to us. MR. KLAIDMAN: And any advice you can give us about how to get the medical monitoring records, not just the records of the accident itself, but the records of the medical monitoring. MR. CLARK: This has been an ongoing thing, sometimes two and three times a year. DR. OLEINICK: Well, then the records are available. MR. KLAIDMAN: There should be records. MR. CLARK: ORAU has got all the records. MR. JONES: I couldn't find any. MS. KITTRELL: And from what I know, they might be at REACS. MR. CLARK: It's ORINS, Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies and then it was Oak Ridge Associated Universities, but if they haven't destroyed them, the records are out there. MR. JONES: They told me the room caught on fire and burned my dad's up. I got one picture, that's it. DR. OLEINICK: Okay. Well, I think the staff knows about this and if they have that documentation, we can follow up on it. Thank you very much. MR. CLARK: Thank you. DR. OLEINICK: We'll have to move on though. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: The next speaker is Ms. Claudia Soulyarette. I may not have pronounced that correctly. CLAUDIA SOULYARETTE MS. SOULYARETTE: It is Claudia Soulyarette, you were very, very close, which is kind of unusual. DR. OLEINICK: I have an unpronounceable name as well. MS. SOULYARETTE: I'd like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. I'm going to be brief. You've mentioned several times the importance of documentation in looking into these issues. Lack of documentation has been a major problem for the people in this area who wonder if possibly their health problems might be related to releases from the Oak Ridge reservation. The very few studies that have been done have all been of workers. There's been no study of the off- site population. We can't even get hold of epidemiological data because the Tennessee Department of Health has a Division of Contagious Diseases and a Division of Environmental Epidemiology. They have no staff people assigned to keep track of chronic disorders, and many of the diseases that people are concerned about high incidence of in this area are chronic -- lupus, multiple sclerosis, adult onset diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, et cetera. What we really need here, in addition to these epidemiological studies, is clinical studies, because we are dealing with multiple contaminants with synergistic effects. But we cannot seem to interest anybody in coming in and looking at health trends in the area and evaluation of patients. We have a lot of people here who have serious health problems and cannot get a diagnosis on them. I couldn't give you numbers on that; as I said, we can't get hold of the numbers. But they'll be told that they have one thing and then get another opinion and told they have another thing. And their symptoms don't really fit into the profile for any known disease. We do have a body called the Oak Ridge Health Assessment Steering Panel which was given $12.4 million by the state to do health assessment. So far what they have done is dose reconstruction, and that's well and good, dose reconstruction of the releases needs to be done, but they have not done any health studies at all, they have not begun any health studies. At one point, I called the Tennessee Health Department to tell them I suspected we had a cluster of cases of MS in the area, would they please look into it. I was assured that they would and after about three or four months, I had not heard from them so I called them back and I was told that that issue had been turned over to the Division of Environmental Epidemiology. What they did was invite me to an ORHASP at which they discussed their proposed health study, which they might carry out. And it would, by definition, leave out MS, because what they planned to do was do dose reconstruction, track down the exposed populations and then compare -- do research to discover what diseases could be caused by the contaminants that were known to have been released, and then compare the incidence of those diseases in exposed and unexposed populations. That would leave out any disease for which the cause is unknown obviously. So, not only did they fail to address my question, they pretty much insulted my intelligence while they were at it. I was not happy that I was expected to be pacified with that. What we need here, more than anything else, I believe, is some clinical health studies. There has been nothing done in this area at all. That's all I have to say. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. Questions? DR. ROYAL: By clinical health studies, you mean -- MS. SOULYARETTE: Evaluation of patients, right. DR. ROYAL: But you want to know what percent of patients have particular diseases and how does that number of diseases compare with other communities? Is that what you mean by a clinical health study? MS. SOULYARETTE: That's more of an epidemiological study. I mean, we need some researchers to come in and evaluate people with these mysterious health problems. Do you see what I'm saying? DR. ROYAL: Well, I understand what you're saying. I'm not sure what the details are of that statement. If you don't know the cause of a disease, it's hard to do anything except admit that you don't know the cause of that disease. So a clinical health study, again, I was asking whether or not what you wanted to know is the incident rates of diseases in the Oak Ridge community as compared with the incident rates of diseases in other communities. MS. SOULYARETTE: Right. And also, as I said, I believe we need some medical facility with researchers to look at these patients, to keep track of say the prevalence of certain symptoms and see if they can track their exposure to certain contaminants. We have radioactive materials, heavy metals and chemical pollutants all in this area. I realize that you're only concerned with radiation but -- DR. OLEINICK: Well, that's been our charge, is to be concerned with radiation. It's rather hard to avoid looking at the larger problem, but we can't make specific recommendations in terms of the other. MS. SOULYARETTE: Right. DR. OLEINICK: I think you have to keep in mind for a disease such as MS or lupus where the cause isn't known, and you have multiple possibilities of environmental contaminants perhaps contributing to a problem which may or may not be ultimately of environmental origin. It's going to be extremely difficult to sort that out. MS. SOULYARETTE: Right. I should say that I'm not that familiar with lupus, but MS is extremely easy to misdiagnose. A lot of other things can have the same symptoms. DR. OLEINICK: Right. DR. ROYAL: The issue that you bring up, I think is a very important one, and that is whether or not communities really want more studies done in the community or whether or not they would like that money, instead of being spent for more studies, to actually be given to people living in that community to build better health care facilities that would be able to directly benefit the population in that area. MS. SOULYARETTE: Right. That was along the lines of what I meant by clinical health studies, medical researchers to evaluate patients and provide treatment. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Our last presenter this morning is Mr. Dick Smyser. DICK SMYSER MR. SMYSER: I have a prepared statement, which I will read in part. I came to Oak Ridge in early 1949 to be the first editor of what would become the first successful independent daily newspaper, and what then was the still quite new community. Some of my earliest personal friends were staff members of the then also quite new Medical Division of the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies. One of them was a young research assistant who would, about a year later, become my wife. But under any circumstances, I would have soon known, at least on a professional level, many of those same persons through the numerous news stories about the Medical Division hospital, which we published in the Oak Ridger. The opening of this facility was major local, state, regional, national and even international news. The top personnel, and especially Dr. Marshall Brusher (ph), the outspoken first director, were newsmakers. Virtually every story that we published stated clearly that the Medical Division was experimenting with new cancer therapies with patients referred to it by the member universities of ORINS, which even from ORINS earliest years included all the leading universities of the south. Made clear in at least most of these news stories was that patients had come to the hospital for two primary reasons in the hope that these experimental radiation therapies might help them, or that their willingness to be subjects of these treatments might benefit others with cancer then and in the future. Also very much implied was that only a limited number of patients could be admitted, it was a small facility, there were strict criteria for admittance, physician referral was required and there would be waiting lists. I have here with me only a sampling of media writings about the Medical Division. Examples that I happen to have are from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Knoxville Journal, the Knoxville News-Sentinel, the Louisville Courier Journal and Times, the Chattanooga Times, the Oak Ridger and even Mademoiselle. The Medical Division also made news because it was one of the primary places to which visitors to Oak Ridge were taken. In those years, security remained tight at nuclear materials production facilities and even at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, although radio-isotopes production there and primarily radio-isotopes production for medical purposes, was well known. And so foreign dignitaries, senators, representatives and even royalty were taken to the Medical Division Hospital. These occasions were often pictured in the Oak Ridger and other newspapers, like the visit of Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow of the President, when she came to Oak Ridge for a lecture in 1955. Other distinguished visitors included Prince Albert of Belgium, Kuachi Uda (ph), the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission Chairman, and Sir Erwin Plowden, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority of Great Britain. There were many more, but I have here reproductions of clippings from the Knoxville Journal and the Oak Ridger telling of these specific visits. The Medical Division Hospital soon also became an Oak Ridge community project. With the encouragement of the Medical Division staff, civic and religious organizations assisted patients and their families. Through Oak Ridge Church Women United in particular, volunteers visited regularly making sure combs, toothpaste, magazines, stationery, stamps, games and books for the children -- anything that the patients needed, they were there to provide. At least one church within walking distance of the hospital offered free lodgings to family members in a house adjacent to that church. The ORINS Medical Division Hospital was a community project, as surely as were the Scouts, the Y and food baskets for the needy at Christmas. These citizen efforts were also newsworthy. And while most of the patients were from elsewhere, significant numbers were local, like the wife of the then director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who was treated there in the late stages of her own terminal cancer. Now surely at least some of the radiation experiments involving humans in which there was Oak Ridge participation appear to have gone beyond the bounds of ethical medicine, even under the rules of that time, and to have been done with no, or at least very little public knowledge. But as this Committee prepares its final report, I urge it to take pains to avoid libeling other radiation therapy experimentation like that especially at the ORINS/ORAU Medical Division, which was done with wide public knowledge, much of this public information initiated by the experimental therapists themselves. So I ask that in your report, you do what you can to assure historical perspective, historical context and acknowledgement that much radiation therapy experimentation, and again like that at ORINS/ORAU especially, was not only widely public known, but also generously community supported. And to the extent that my request is superfluous and presumptuous as it seems to assume that you committee members would not naturally be sensitive to this, my apologies. Just one last reference. I was struck by the deja vu in an article in the February 15 issue of the Oak Ridger. Just two weeks ago, Dr. Ronald H. Lands, an Oak Ridge oncologist, wrote about the clinical trials program at the new Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge's new Cancer Therapy Center. He wrote, "Why then would a patient have any desire to take part in a clinical trial? The main reason is desire for personal benefit. Many patients are also motivated to participate in clinical trials because of the knowledge that even if they do not benefit personally, the information may contribute to improved treatments that will help people in the future." That just two weeks ago. That to be is ORINS/ORAU Medical Division precisely. Thank you. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Questions? DR. ROYAL: I'd just like to thank you for coming and hopefully you will give copies of those articles to Steve. MR. SMYSER: I have them here, yes. DR. ROYAL: Good. Because I do think it's important to understand what was happening in the context of the times, and the newspaper articles that accompanied this research has been very helpful to us in terms of understanding what the public understood about what was going on at the time. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. I understand that because we are a little bit ahead of schedule, we will be hearing from two other people at this time. The next one is Mr. Floyd Grizzell. FLOYD GRIZZELL MR. GRIZZELL: Good morning to you people and those in my rear. I appreciate this. I started in 1963 through the Knoxville Journal who denied me the privilege of putting an article in the paper. I went to work -- oh, by the way, I'd like to comment that not everybody has a fore-runner like Dr. Morgan, because I date back to Dr. Morgan. He probably doesn't remember me but I had an awful lot of correspondence with his name on it. I went to work in 1945 at X-10 and I've got a few comments and then a few questions. And I'm sure the questions won't be answered today. You know, when men and women go to war, they're trained. They're usually told what the outcome could be, and we know now that even the armed services are not told when it comes to the training which involves nuclear power. Private companies train men, they tell them what the outcome could be. And as I sit and listen to these people -- I thought I had problems. At my age, I'm in fine shape. I personally knew the father of these two men that just left this podium. I had a lot of notes, and I keep looking back and they're getting -- since Dr. Morgan came on in front of me, I kind of changed it, because when I went to work there we had problems with the geiger counter. We had one assigned to the department for each shift and half the time it wouldn't work. But we still had to carry on. It didn't change the shift procedure because we were on a production schedule. We talk about radiation tolerances and I hope Dr. Morgan can understand me, we didn't know what a tolerance was when I went to work there. Our dosimeters didn't work half the time, they changed different styles. We've even had dosimeters assigned to us that didn't have film in them. So my comment in that respect is I don't understand why they wanted to hide it from us, unless they were just as ignorant -- that's not nice to say -- as we were. And I'm almost positive that we, even though they're not calling us guinea pigs, we were -- in order to get a certain, we'll say a thing done or things done, we were expendable. And the tragic part is that when I went there, I was a very young man. The men who worked with me, I'd say 95 percent are buried. I'm one of the last Mohicans. And it's time, if the workers and the families are to have any kind of recipient help, it's time this country did it. They talk about the nuclear bomb stopping the wars. Then they should do something to help the people that put the nuclear power on the map. The children are suffering from it. I'm blessed that I don't think mine are, but I am. I have a piece of paper here that I only received just a few weeks ago, of some material, "Over- exposed nuclear workers not told" in 1948. But I certainly very strongly remember that every week we were given -- and this came from Dr. Morgan's department -- the amount of radiation that was read from our meters. But then I remember when they cut that off. But our work and exposure didn't change. I'm one of the ones that was taken out of radiation in 1950 at X-10, sent to Y-12. Believe it or not, sent me to Idaho, right back in it. Came back, well I traveled back and forth, then I was assigned back to X-10 right back in it. But yet, the doctors over there didn't want me in radiation. So they didn't follow their own advice. Now, my time is probably done up, but I've got some questions. If the powers at hand intend to acknowledge the older workers and the conditions they worked and the damage that's been done, then I'm asking what are they going to do, if anything. And I'm doubtful, because I've been looking at 26 years since I left the plant. I want to know why they hid -- and they did hide it -- they denied and they still deny what took place. It's so, because just like this information here dug out of the records. I've seen several more pieces. The next one is what are they going to do. And the last one is when is it going to be done. Because at my age, I'm not going to be around here long enough to see it done. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much, Mr. Grizzell. I think your questions are certainly very important ones and this is part of the charge of the Committee, is to try to take account of everything that happened and to come up with some recommendations to Congress. And then of course, it's up to Congress to decide. So it's very important that we heard from you. Thank you very much. MR. GRIZZELL: Thank you. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Mrs. Mary McNamara. MARY and FRED MCNAMARA MS. MCNAMARA: Hello. I am Mary McNamara, I reside in Dandridge, Tennessee and this is my husband, Fred, and he's the one that I'm concerned about, plus my children, two of them that were born after he was exposed to whatever level of radiation -- I don't know and he doesn't know and we can't find out. But I'm also concerned, and I feel this is pertinent to what you're doing here, not just who was given radiation testing, trials, et cetera, to see which would be the most effective dosage or the least effective, the most deadly, but in the fact that he was a guinea pig when he was exposed, that he had to be subjected to counts, to urine tests, bring the little bottle home to get the fecal matter, et cetera, et cetera. To me, that was testing. So I believe he fits into that category. He was in a machine fire and from what I understand there was someone there -- he worked the machine, did the geiger count study, went through high -- whatever occurred, I have no idea, and he was made to shower, change clothes, et cetera. So they proceeded to check him again. That was testing, in my estimation that was testing. Following this, numerous things occurred to him, and remembering that he was in his very early 30s, in 1961 after multiple going and seeing his records, and I didn't bring them all -- fortunately we were able to get some of the records, some we could not get a good detailed picture of. I don't know if it was blacked out or it was a method of not wanting us to see what was on the sheets. I have no way of proving. But seeing his medical records of treated for cold, treated for cold, treated for cold -- I mean, this was for several years. Okay, in 1961, he had to have a bronchoscopy and the closest that Dr. Thomas Prince got to telling us that he thought it was related to the radiation that he received -- he had the bronchoscopy of which they withdrew much fluid -- problems began. He's had heart problems, and as I've heard several of them say, the thyroid problems, multiple problems, rheumatic problems, seizures, grand mal. Dr. Fred Brown treated him for a few years, etiology unknown. They just knew he had these terrible grand mal seizures and some were status epilepticus which means that he would go into one and stay in it and stay in it, which could have been deadly. Over a period of years, they just stopped. He has recurrent dermatitis and they sent him to a Dr. Lancaster. Dr. Lancaster said it must be your wife's hair dye. I didn't dye my hair -- not then anyway. It has to be your wife's shampoo. And he even, in some of the letters that are in here, inferred that it was my husband's head that was his problem. And finally after a few years, Dr. Wiegal saw him and said he was not a malingerer, there was something wrong. But here every time we asked somebody, I can't say. We began to get little messages that you don't -- you can't get a doctor who will say this is related to Oak Ridge. But they continued to monitor him. Now if that isn't testing and following and watching -- I think there should be some truth for once with our federal government. He's had the typical picture. I am a registered nurse, I know years ago we did some x-rays and we knew they would come back burned up. We took care of cobalt patients, we knew they would be deathly sick, but we knew this, that it was a trial. But they didn't tell him it was a trial, they didn't know the dose that he would get would affect him. Okay, after all of these things had occurred, -- oh, and he was also diagnosed with polycythemia, just bunches of problems. After the fire occurred -- I don't know that it happened because of this, but after hearing some of the detailed reports out of the Persian Gulf, I'd say anything could happen, -- I began to have cervical problems, which about four or five years down the road ended up with me at age 32 having to have a hysterectomy, a complete hysterectomy, borderline cancer, excoriated cervix. That's all the doctor could say, excoriated, raw, red, I burned, I burned continually. I had two daughters born -- or we did -- one in 1960 and one in 1961 and both of those have had terrible physical problems. Immunal studies, one of them has gone through, they've both had problems with their immune system, severe allergies. I have one that has severe eruptions, she was the first one born. Her fingers would get raw, she would break out just like her father. He would get these terrible red hot areas, wake up during the night, but yet for them to say it was my hair dye or my shampoo -- we changed his soap, and it only occurred where he was exposed to the burn. And my feeling is that from that burn which, knowing what effects burns do to the skin, that he did have some radiation to occur and the resultant effect of that is that he has continually gone down with his physical being. And I can only say fortunately he had an RN that he was married to that halfway took care of him. And I thank you for your time and if he has anything to add, if he may -- we're still on the yellow light. MR. MCNAMARA: Well, the only thing I can say, my father and mother both worked at Oak Ridge, they both died with cancer. I mean if they want to add the cancer deal to it, she was 55, he was 64, getting ready to retire. When I went there, I came straight out of the coal mines, so I know I was healthy. And when I left there, I left there with a medical. And like she says, I've gone downhill since. So I'm like the man that just left, I'm 68, they're not going to do nothing for me, but there's somebody, third generation down the line, or like my daughters that's hurting now. So I wish they would do something. They do it for AIDS. AIDS people are better off than we are. MS. MCNAMARA: Thank you very much for your time. DR. OLEINICK: No, they're not. MR. MCNAMARA: Yeah, they are, they're getting money, they're getting medicine. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. And again, if you wish to provide any of that to us, certainly the monitoring will be helpful. MS. MCNAMARA: I don't have copies, but I will make copies and send them to the address. DR. OLEINICK: That will be helpful. MS. MCNAMARA: But I do want to admonish y'all to please make them understand that they were guinea pigs too. They worked there but they were guinea pigs. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Well, we're scheduled to take a lunch break at this point, and I would like to see us back here about one o'clock. Is that okay? (Whereupon, a luncheon recess was taken at 11:53 a.m., the hearing to continue at 1:00 p.m., the same day.) AFTERNOON SESSION DR. OLEINICK: Okay, we've all had some lunch and are ready to begin the afternoon. This is group three and the first speaker is Dr. Bill Bibb. Is Dr. Bibb here? DR. BIBB: Madam Chairwoman, can Dr. Burr and I switch places? DR. OLEINICK: Certainly, that's fine. GROUP THREE BILL BURR DR. BURR: From 1984 until 1991, I was Chairman of the Medical Sciences Division of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. DR. OLEINICK: Can you get closer to the microphone, please? DR. BURR: Is this satisfactory? DR. ROYAL: That's better. DR. OLEINICK: That's fine. DR. BURR: I was the Chairman of the Medical Sciences Division of Oak Ridge Associated Universities, ORAU, which is now Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, ORISE, and much earlier, commencing in December of 1960, I was a member of the Biology and Medicine Division of the Atomic Energy Commission. I continued in ERDA and DOE until 1981. Today, from my experience in the AEC, I would like to address some aspects of the medical programs of the AEC, and in particular the protection of human subjects and in some instances relate this to the measures at Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies, ORINS Medical Division. Following the passage of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 the AEC was established and on January 1, 1947, by executive order, the Manhattan District was dissolved and all of the facilities, the staff and appropriations transferred to the AEC. Early in the first year, with the assistance of an interim medical advisory committee, the AEC established a Division of Biology and Medicine and a well qualified physician, Dr. Shields Warren, was selected as division director. One of the early programs of the AEC led to the establishment of ORINS Medical Division. In 1948, Congress earmarked $5 million for AEC sponsored cancer research. AEC used these funds to establish a cancer research hospital and a supporting biomedical research program at ORINS, as well as the Argonne Cancer Research Hospital operated by the University of Chicago and Brookhaven National Laboratory. The focus was on cancer. The objective was to bring the benefits that could be gained by applying the knowledge and materials of the war time nuclear effort to diagnostic and therapeutic medical procedures. The ORINS program proved both for the development of methods and the training of physicians. At AEC, even earlier, the question of clinical testing was discussed and the general manager of the AEC gave guidance on this issue. I quote parts of a letter dated April 30, 1947 from the General Manager, Mr. Wilson, to Dr. Stafford Warren, the Chairman of the Interim Medical Committee. "It is understood that your committee has recommended a program for obtaining medical data of interest to the Commission in the course of the treatment of patients. The Commission understands that in the course of the approved program; A, treatment which may involve clinical testing will be administered to patient only when there is expectation that it may have therapeutic effect. And B, the decision as to the advisability of treatment will be made by the doctor concerned." And then they go on to say, "the Commission does not intend to influence in any way the exercise of judgement by the doctor as to the administration of any particular treatment." Then the letter goes on to say that "it should be susceptible to prove from the official record that prior to the treatment, each individual -- of each individual patient -- that each individual patient being in an understanding state of mind was clearly informed of the nature of the treatment and its possible effects and expressed his willingness to receive treatment. "The Commission does not request that written releases be obtained in such cases, but it does request that in every case, at least two doctors should certify in writing, made part of the official record, to the patient's understanding state of mind, to the explanation furnished him and to his willingness to accept treatment." This is signed by Carroll L. Wilson, the General Manager of the Atomic Energy Commission. I read this to note that this subject was addressed by the AEC very early in its existence; in fact, within the first year, and to point out the date of 1947, which happens to be the year of the Nuremberg Code of Ethics, a major point of which is that there must be voluntary consent. The practices of ORINS Medical Division from its beginning, the patient booklet, the application for admission, the patient's admittance agreement were also consistent with this code of ethics. The ACBM -- this is going back to AEC. The Advisory Committee for Biology and Medicine continued to play an important oversight role throughout most or all of the existence of the AEC. Programs were discussed with them; their advice was often sought. I should note that this committee reported directly to the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. The Division of Biology and Medicine had a professional staff who monitored research, sought outside review of proposed work, held peer reviews and had its own internal committee. Dr. Bibb, I believe, will address this further. This was another mechanism to ensure sound programs. AEC biology and medicine programs followed the guidelines of what is now the Department of Health and Human Services in regard to studies regarding human subjects. Following the declaration of Helsinki in 1964 when the surgeon general of the Public Health Service introduced further guidance -- and this was 1966 -- the AEC reviewed its practices, and I quote from a letter dated December 14, 1966 from the Director of the Division of Biology and Medicine to Program Directors. "Following the lead of the surgeon general in instituting a code of ethics for human experimentation, it seems appropriate that we in the Atomic Energy Commission assure ourselves that our own house is in order. I should therefore like to propose that we consider at our next program directors' meeting procedures that each of you are following at your respective institution and compare them with the Public Health Service requirements. Enclosed is a copy of the Surgeon General's statement as well as a checklist which the Public Health Service staff uses to evaluate the institution's compliance. Signed C. L. Dunham, M.D., Director." At ORINS Medical Division, this guidance led to the establishment in 1967 of a human use committee or institutional review board which must review and approve proposed or continuing studies involving human subjects. The committee assurance statement was accepted by what is now HHS in 1969. In the '70s, guidelines on the protection of human subjects were codified in the federal regulations. This was about '74 for HHS. DOE's present rule, Title 10, CFR, Part 745 adopts the common rule which was agreed to by a number of federal departments a few years ago. That concludes my remarks. DR. OLEINICK: Perhaps we ought to let Dr. Bibb speak and then we can address questions to both of you. Thank you very much. BILL BIBB DR. BIBB: Thank you Madam Chair. My name is Bill Bibb and I'm retired from the Department of Energy. I retired in 1993. At the time of my retirement, I was Assistant Manager for Defense Programs in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. My purpose in testifying today -- and I represent no one but myself -- is to provide some historical perspective on the radiation -- human radiation work supported by the Atomic Energy Commission. I started my career in the federal government with the Medical Research Branch of the Division of Biology and Medicine, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C. My supervisor was Dr. Burr. I left the medical school at Chapel Hill to go with the Division of Biology and Medicine. The Division of Biology and Medicine, as Dr. Burr indicated, was created and charged with -- by the Congress and the Commission -- with exploiting, number one, the new forms of radiation both for the benefit of the patient as well as using these for training for physicians and allied health professionals. I would like to just touch on a couple of subjects today. My prepared statement will go into these in more detail. The first is the role of the Medical Branch in reviewing proposals. Any work that was supported by the Atomic Energy Commission, particularly the Medical Research Branch, had to be submitted on a yearly basis -- a full proposal. It had to be technically reviewed by technical staff of the Division of Biology and Medicine. It had to be submitted for outside independent review by at least three outside reviewers. It then had to be subjected to a technical review by all of the professional staff in the Division of Biology and Medicine. If it passed all those wickets, it was then recommended for review and approval by the director for funding. I mention this because that's entirely different from the way the Department of Energy works today. So, those who would come forward and talk about DOE works today, we're talking about two separate issues. And I would hope this committee, as part of your looking into this entire area, would begin to look at the issue of the government's role in oversight of the early research, and more importantly, the government's responsibility. Because, I assure you, the technical staff, such as myself, who worked there in these divisions during those days felt ourselves responsible for the work that was being supported and we're more than willing to answer questions on the quality of that work or how it was conducted. Unlike today, we were very familiar with the work; we visited with the principal investigators; we visited the sites and we were expected by Dr. Burr and Dr. Dunham, the director of our division, to be able to answer questions by the Congress and the Commission at any time on any work of which we had approved. I think that's a long way of saying there was a level of accountability which has been absent in the government for a long time. The second issue I would like to deal with is the issue of secrecy. I've heard in some of the discussions which have come before you committee, this constant referring to cold war mentality. The cold war mentality is about like the use of the word medical experimentation. I mean, that depends on how you want to define it. It tends to be a word used more to imply state of mind, I think. The medical research program, which I was aware of, was certainly not influenced by the cold war mentality. As a matter of fact, it was a totally unclassified program. We didn't even have a safe for classified documents in our office. The AEC hospitals, which you've heard about, were unclassified. They were not even authorized to have classified documents. Much of the work that you've heard about was the Army work, the Manhattan Engineering District work, which hung over into the very early days of the AEC and some of the work you've heard about at the so called design labs. But the AEC hospitals were not classified, and I'm sure you heard this morning from Mr. Smyser about one of those. Finally, I want to make one mention of the issue of informed consent. By the way, the Division of Biology and Medicine published yearly a thing called Research and Progress. Research and Progress listed every research project supported by the Division of Biology and Medicine. The name of the principal investigator, the funds involved and a summary. It was a public document, widely disseminated, widely available. It also included sheets from the Smithsonian Institute called Besse (ph) Sheets, because the Smithsonian also carried a yearly summary of all the research -- all the research. The final statement I would want to at least allude to is voluntary consent. As you heard from Dr. Burr, voluntary consent was a requirement of all reviewers in the Division of Biology and Medicine. To make certain that any work supported at any institution, that you were always sensitive to that fact. And I know of no work that would not have met the medical standards of practice at the time in which the work was approved. Now, it's easy to sit here today and go back and say we could have done it differently, but that's not an opportunity any of us have. I have a much longer statement, Madam Chairwoman. Obviously, I'll be more than happy to answer questions from any of you on any subject you would like to raise. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. I think what you've said has been very important. I would appreciate -- I'm sure we would all appreciate it if we had copies of the longer statement because clearly you have touched on issues which I'm sure you want to have fleshed out. You've raised a number of extremely important issues. Actually, you've gone to the heart of what this committee is trying to get at, trying to identify what the standards were and then how those standards were translated into practice in government supported institutions and private institutions and so forth throughout the country. I'm sure that my colleagues also have questions. Let me just ask one to begin with. You brought up the issue of the informed consent and accountability. There are certain experiments which of course have come more into the public eye than others. I asked this morning -- I asked Dr. Morgan this morning about -- for example, the one plutonium injection -- the first one that was done at Oak Ridge. Could you give me some insight into how that particular experiment was dealt with through the division and how the investigators presented their case and how the division and the other layers of bureaucracy evaluated that experiment and then let it go through? DR. BIBB: I'm not sure they did. There was a transition period there of -- if you'll remember, that was about '46 or 47. DR. OLEINICK: Right. DR. BIBB: There was a transition period there of the Oak Ridge Hospital under ORAU. The first patient under ORAU was not admitted until 1950, okay? DR. OLEINICK: Okay. DR. BIBB: So from the standpoint of the Biology and Medicine oversight of the AEC hospital there, the AEC hospital, so to speak, did not open until 1950. So for me to go back and start -- see, if I could divide the world into two ballparks, what we call the civilian program and the military program. I don't mean to make one better or the other better. It has to do with classification and lots of other things. The civilian program, which I'm most familiar with, was a very open program. It was started from day-one as being an open program, but there was a transition period as best I can learn. And I think that's what we're talking about here. But I think the program and the Oak Ridge hospital itself, the AEC hospital there was a very open program. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. DR. ROYAL: We have a number of historians on the Committee's staff. Have they spoken to you about -- DR. BIBB: No. DR. ROYAL: -- the history? Who -- DR. BIBB: No, that's one of my frustrations. This is -- DR. ROYAL: Well, I think that we'll make sure that they speak to you. Who has it been that they've been speaking to related to ORAU? Who on the ORAU staff have they been -- DR. BIBB: I'm not ORAU's staff. I'm a retired employee living in Oak Ridge who finally got so tired of this that I finally decided to raise my head and say something. I've watched your public meetings; I've seen all kind of data come in; I know it's wrong. It's been badly misinterpreted. And so, finally, I decided it's time somebody who knows a little bit about this better speak up because there's a massive attempt here to rewrite history and you're rewriting it wrong. DR. ROYAL: Yeah, I'm encouraging you to speak up. DR. BIBB: Well, how do you do that? I'm here speaking up. DR. ROYAL: No, no, I -- DR. BIBB: You've been at work for over a year and your staff has made no effort whatsoever to find me and I'm not hidden. I testified at the Gore hearings on this subject when I was still with AEC. I've testified in other places. So, I think the burden is on your committee to at least do a little something. I mean, after all, I just came out of the -- DR. ROYAL: I can assure you that someone from the committee staff will contact you. What I'm trying to find out is who else they should be speaking to that they have not yet spoken to. Would you be willing to provide me a list of -- DR. BIBB: I'd be -- I'd love to do that. DR. ROYAL: Okay. DR. BIBB: I would be more than happy to sit down and go through some of the documents and explain -- what you're faced with, I'm afraid, is a lot of documents that are being pulled from all kinds of places. And somebody needs to say, well -- DR. ROYAL: My head is spinning, believe me. (Laughter.) DR. BIBB: I understand. But somebody needs to be able to say I've looked at these. When I was with DOE back in '74 when this issue first came up the first time, we had to go through a lot of these documents because there was a depository within Oak Ridge. I came down and looked at them and I know what you're going through. But at some point in time, you have to realize they don't all necessarily relate to each other. So, I'll be happy to help any way I can. DR. OLEINICK: I think that's true. I think we have been trying to identify as many people as possible that could provide us essentially an oral history supplemented by whatever documentation is available, and you would certainly be of value. I don't know how this slipped through the cracks. But certainly, I wish you had spoken up even earlier. But since you've spoken up now, you will not be forgotten. DR. BIBB: There's an old saying, and that is, I don't have a dog in this fight. So I didn't want to get in the middle of it. DR. OLEINICK: Oh, I understand that. DR. BIBB: But after a while, if you watch C-Span enough your titer gets too high and my titer just went right out the top. DR. OLEINICK: After two minutes it can. DR. BIBB: Well, no, it really had to do with the Secretary's remarks in which she made rather broad indictments of the entire field of medicine and I was not going to set still and put up with that. DR. OLEINICK: Well, I mean, we're very happy that you spoke today. I think this is very important and the staff will certainly contact you. I'm quite sure that they're going to be very interested in taking oral history. And any other names that you can provide -- other people that you think can also offer those kinds of insights would be extremely important. There's no question about it. DR. BIBB: Well the concern I've got is that we do not leave unnecessarily a lot of physicians hanging out there with the impression being that they made all these decisions and were simply taking radioisotopes and doing strange things with them. Every bit of that work was submitted to the government for review and approval and somebody in the government said yes, that's worth doing and I'm going to fund it. That's the part that worries me that I think is critical that you don't leave out, because the government had a major role to play in this and it can't shirk that role. It's a responsible party to this whole thing. DR. OLEINICK: I think if you've -- you said you've been following the testimony of the committee, the discussions and deliberations of the committee -- DR. BIBB: Right. DR. OLEINICK: I think if we've reached any kind of a conclusions, it's that the first -- let's say -- if I use the term individual that we need to discuss, it's the government. Because clearly, much of the research was funded and promoted by one branch of the government or another. So we are in agreement. DR. BIBB: Yeah, but the other concern I have is that as I see more and more effort by the Department and other agencies to try and hold contractors liable, that's fine if the contractor had gone out and done something on their own. What I'm trying to say is, during the period of time in question here, there was nothing done at any of these sites that AEC didn't -- or Bureau of Radiological Health or NIH or somebody didn't say it's okay. And to me, that is a -- that is an accepting of the responsibility somewhere along the line. DR. OLEINICK: Absolutely. DR. BIBB: If I just got that point across, I think we're halfway there. Because that's been my concern since day one that good people doing good research don't wind up being essentially blamed for things of which the government was a willing partner -- more than a willing partner. DR. OLEINICK: Well, I hope that whatever you've heard of the Committee's deliberations, you don't come away with the impression of this last statement that we're out to essentially carry out a witch hunt. We're trying to just find the most -- DR. BIBB: No, it's my -- no, quite the contrary. I think the Committee really was -- I probably was more relieved to hear the Committee -- I was concerned that the Secretary of Energy was starting a witch hunt because she made statements which are totally -- and I find very objectionable. They were gross misstatements and that's what got me stirred up. The Committee I think on the other hand is doing what should have been done, which is look at the data and then make conclusions. Don't do it the other way around. DR. OLEINICK: Well, we're trying to do that. I think the important thing at this point is that the staff will certainly be in touch with you to arrange for more detailed testimony than you can give here. We would also like to have a copy of your remarks as soon as possible. DR. BIBB: You'll get them as soon as I can walk right around there with them. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. DR. BIBB: Thanks for your time. I appreciate it very much. MR. KLAIDMAN: Nancy, I have a question for Dr. Burr. DR. OLEINICK: Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. MR. KLAIDMAN: Could I just ask Dr. Burr one question before the two of you are done? You mentioned a memorandum that's been very important to us, Carroll Wilson's memorandum in which he talks about informed consent among other issues. I just wondered if you could provide any insight at all into why that memo specifically says that signed consent will not be required? We've puzzled over that. DR. BURR: I'm sorry, I'm having trouble hearing you. I have a hearing impairment. MR. KLAIDMAN: The question is why the Carroll Wilson memo specifically says that we will not require signed patient consent. DR. BURR: Oh, okay. MR. KLAIDMAN: Any insight there? DR. BURR: I think that's a good point because now we would say, yes, sign them. And from the time that ORAU -- ORINS rather, Medical Division was instituted, there were signed documents. I don't know why the Commission took the position that if there was suitable proof in the documents -- in documentation that the patient was understanding -- able to understand, and that they signed at their own free will and two doctors agreed that that was the case, that was sufficient. I can't go back that -- now remember the guidance -- the protection of human subjects has been an evolving thing. There have been various codes of -- the major ones, of course, being the Nuremberg Code of '47 and I doubt that -- it might have been available, but I don't know. This was very early in '47 when this letter was written by the chairman. MR. KLAIDMAN: I just found it interesting that it specifies that it doesn't need to be signed. DR. BURR: You've picked up a good point because I wonder now why that would have been said too, whereas you would like to have it in writing. Maybe somebody raised a reason. There are exceptions even now when it can't always be in writing. This is in the common rule. There is a provision for that, you know -- MR. KLAIDMAN: Yes. DR. BURR: -- but I don't know the circumstances. MR. KLAIDMAN: Thank you. DR. ROYAL: If I could attempt to answer Steve's question. My impression is that because it was not commonly done in medicine, to have patients sign informed consent -- MR. KLAIDMAN: The curious think was that it specified that it need not be signed. DR. OLEINICK: Yeah. MR. KLAIDMAN: If it was not commonly done, one would have thought it simply would not have been specified. That was my -- the source of my curiosity. DR. OLEINICK: All right, we're going to have to move on. Thank you very much. Dr. Shirley Fry. SHIRLEY FRY DR. FRY: Good afternoon. I'm Shirley Fry, Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, commonly known as ORISE. I'm a physician epidemiologist in the Institute's Medical Sciences Division where I have been employed since 1978. I'm a former director of the division's Center for Epidemiologic Research and former assistant director of the Medical Sciences Division. For the last year, I have headed ORISE's Human Radiation Experimentation project whereby we were charged with searching, identifying and retrieving for public release documents and records pertinent to any of the radiation studies involving human subjects that were conducted at Oak Ridge Institute for Nuclear Studies, later known as Oak Ridge Associated Universities during the 1950s, '60s and '70s. I appreciate this opportunity today to share with you some of the important results of the efforts of our records retrieval project. In the interest of time, I'll focus my remarks on some of the topics the Committee has previously shown an interest in. Additional information is attached to my written statement. I respectfully request that the attachment also be entered into the record as a supplement to my remarks. It provides information relating to the Center -- the cancer research and hospital program at ORINS/ORAU that was operated under the contract to the Atomic Energy Commission from 1950 to 1974. Important findings of our recent search for documents and records pertinent to this program and to the human radiation studies associated with it include the following: First, as Dr. Bibb has alluded, none of the work done at the AEC or any other federal agencies by ORINS or ORAU's divisions, including the Medical Sciences Division has ever been classified or secret. Second, the results of the basic biomedical and clinical studies conducted for this program in the Medical Division have been presented and discussed at numerous professional and technical meetings in the United States and abroad by the Division's staff since the program's inception. Similarly descriptions and results of these studies have been published in the form of papers in prestigious peer review journal articles, testimony before congressional committees and in numerous reports. Some of the 1,035 such documents are identified in the institutions's bibliography for the years 1950 to 1974. In addition, we find records identifying that many physicians and scientists from the U.S. and abroad, including the leading experts in their fields of the time, visited ORINS during this period to observe, discuss and share their experiences of the medical uses of radioactive materials, particularly in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. They and their affiliations are also identified in the Medical Division research reports. This what ORINS was about. It was in what we would now call technology transfer, getting the information out -- doing work and getting the information out into the public domain. Beginning with the planning phase of the ORINS cancer research and hospital program, patient understanding and voluntary consent to participate in the clinical studies was a major focus. A booklet which is attached to my presentation was prepared in 1950 that described for prospective patients and their families the program, including the nature of the potential benefits, the limitations of any treatment or other study methods and the rights and obligations of the study participants. This booklet was made available to patients and their families by referring and ORINS' physicians from the time the first patient was admitted to the hospital in May 1950. And digressing from my comments, I would also note that in reviewing the medical charts of patients there is abundant evidence that there was much discussion between the patients and physicians. Many physicians noted that they discussed treatment, progress and so on with the patients and that's noted in the medical charts. A patient's acceptance into the ORINS program after referral by a private physician was contingent on the patient's written consent of the patient's admittance agreement. Consent to surgical procedures and autopsies was also required from 1950 onwards, and for other procedures consent was introduced consistent with current policies and standards. As Dr. Burr has referred -- identified, an independent review board was instituted in 1967. It was later expanded to cover the human studies proposed by scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It is now a joint ORAU/ORNL committee. I have samples of the consent forms. They are available. The actual consent forms are stored in the -- filed in the medical charts of the patient -- the patients. With respect to these medical charts, they are still maintained at ORISE on hard copy or microfiche form, with the exception of a few that were transferred to private physicians or former patients when the hospital was closed in 1974. These records are not classified nor secret. They are however maintained in accordance with Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts and the customary standards of medical confidentiality. The ORINS clinical studies were based, as is the standard practice today, on the body of knowledge gathered from many basic biomedical studies involving cell systems and experimental animals. Many of the human studies that --at ORINS that have been categorized recently as, quote, experiments, were, in fact, experimental treatment or therapeutic studies that had some hope of benefit; however slim, unfortunately, in some cases to the patient. It is important that this distinction be recognized. The distinction between experimental treatment and an experiment. One of our major findings is that little of the information in the documents and records that we found and reviewed was new. Most of the information about the ORINS human radiation studies was found to have been in the public domain for many years. For instance, all aspects of the total body irradiation studies conducted at ORINS from the mid 1950s through 1974 were vigorously reviewed in a congressional hearing before then Congressman Gore in 1981. All this information and supporting documentation was published at the time. Finally, but not insignificantly, we found documentation of the many accomplishments and the contributions of this program to improvements in cancer diagnosis and treatment and the human condition in general. Such is the development of the first supervoltage cobalt therapy unit and the use of gallium 67 in improved soft tissue imaging, thereby assisting in earlier detection of tumors. Both these applications later became standards for use around the world. We also found documentation of some unfilled promises of the medical uses of radionuclides, but progress was made overall. That concludes my remarks. I'll be glad to address any questions. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you, Dr. Fry. DR. ROYAL: Dr. Fry, some of the presenters this morning were -- expressed concern about illnesses among Oak Ridge residents that they attributed to the Oak Ridge Laboratories. Have there been epidemiology studies done in the area to look for increases in disease? Is that something that has been done or is feasible? DR. FRY: Well, there are several points. There have been several using national or regional statistics to look at trends in cancer mortality in the population living around -- the major studies have been conducted of the workers and former workers at the facilities in Oak Ridge. That was a program that we were involved in at Oak Ridge Associated Universities. And now there are ongoing studies developing being conducted by the state. Much more in-depth studies with dose reconstruction for -- to look at possible health effects in the patient population around the area. The worker studies have been published in many journals. DR. OLEINICK: There seems to be a discrepancy between the fact that these studies have been published and that there are others that are ongoing and the information that's available to the general -- or has been given out to the general public. Perhaps this is something for the local papers or whatever to take up to inform the local -- the public here about what has been done and what is being done. DR. FRY: This has a sort of cyclical nature. When we published worker studies, typically, we would inform the public locally as well as the worker population. There is a well set/up system for doing that in Oak Ridge. But then something else comes on the horizon and -- DR. OLEINICK: Right. Some things bear repeating perhaps. Well, thank you very much. DR. FRY: Thank you. MR. KLAIDMAN: Wait, one more. DR. OLEINICK: Oh, yes, go ahead. I'm sorry, Steve. MR. KLAIDMAN: You generously offered to share patient records with us where it can be done within the constraints of the privacy laws. Would we be able to get records of the eight workers who were exposed during the 1958 criticality accident that was discussed earlier today -- the monitoring, the follow-up? DR. FRY: The records do exist, and depending on what proper arrangements would be to access those... MR. KLAIDMAN: Okay, we'll be in touch with you then directly about that. DR. FRY: But, of course, that was not an experiment, that was an accident. DR. OLEINICK: Right. MR. KLAIDMAN: I understand. DR. OLEINICK: We understand. Thank you very much. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: I understand that we have an additional speaker now on the schedule, Reverend Thomas. ACIE BYRD and REVEREND HARDIL THOMAS MR. BYRD: My name is Acie Byrd. I want to thank Jackie Kittrell and Sandra Reid and also your staff member, Kristin, for making this possible for this to take place. I just want to introduce Reverend Thomas. My name is Acie Byrd and I'm a member of the Radiation and Human Rights Task Force and a veterans' coordinator. I want to introduce him because he is a distinguished veteran who is based here in Oak Ridge. Reverend Hardil Thomas of Oak Ridge Tennessee. He spent 22 years of honorable military service. He was awarded the Army service medals and three Army commendations medals and two Bronze Stars and one Air Medal and seven good conduct medals. He is a veteran of the Vietnam war. But most importantly , he's a pastor here in Oak Ridge who has -- some of his parishioners have been suffering from the effects of radiation and other kinds of diseases. Reverend Thomas. REV. THOMAS: Thank you. My name is Hardil Thomas. I always like to get my first name correct because there's only three Hardil's in the world that I know of, my daughter and my nephew. It's H-a-r-d-i-l, Hardil Thomas. Thank you for allowing me to come to share this afternoon. In reading some information, I ran across a statement that the late Winston Churchill came before a governmental body in Great Britain during World War II and he made a very profound statement that pricked the conscience of the people. He made this statement after quoting an African/American writer by the name of McCrae. And I would like to quote an African/American writer with the hope of pricking your conscious. He's Spike Lee. And he has a favorite phrase, do the right thing. I'm not here to accuse anyone of any wrongdoing. But in my 22 years in the military service, I lived by codes and regulations that I believed, and I still believe, that were written by honorable men and women. For 22 years, I gave my life for my country, from the cotton fields of Mississippi to the cabbage patches of Vietnam; from Germany to the rice paddies in Vietnam. I gave my life believing that my country would take care of me, and my country has. It has provided me a good life. Now that I live in Oak Ridge as a full-time pastor, I see hurt and I see pain that I've never seen before in all of my life, and I've been in war. In addition to being a full-time pastor, I'm also Director of the Scarborough Woodland Community that brings me in contact not only with the African/American community but with other people in the community. In addition to that, I work on several boards that allows me to work in the school system and through out Anderson County. I ask you to do the right thing because there are people in Oak Ridge that need you to do the right thing. What is the right thing? I believe the right thing that I'm asking you to do is to make an honest and fair assessment of the problems that all of these tons and tons of paper that I've been reading and I've heard about that say there are problems there. Make a fair assessment of that. Not merely studying the trees and the lakes, but study the people. Talk to the people. Three and four generations are just wondering away. Something is wrong. Please, do the right thing by recommending to your boss or your higher authority that we come in and honestly sit down -- move into the communities if you have to, but sit down and talk to the people, not read some report, not listen to some scientist. I'm not a scientist. I'm a man of God who has to listen and somehow find a ray of hope to give to a five-year old or a seven-year old or someone who is 20 watching their mother, their grandmother dying and they don't know what's wrong. Do the right thing. Come to Oak Ridge and the surrounding communities and make a fair assessment of the people and how they live and what they believe in. Thank you so very much for listening to me. Do the right thing. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much, Reverend Thomas. I hope we're doing that. We're certainly trying. I think your message is inspirational. I guess that maybe will help us to redouble our efforts, but we're certainly trying to do the right thing. We need input from all sides. We do need the scientists too and the papers. But the reason that we're here is because we want to hear from the communities. That's why we're here today -- REV. THOMAS: That's right. DR. OLEINICK: -- because the documents, we can read anywhere. REV. THOMAS: Come to the Oak Ridge community and some way, some fashion, sit down and talk to the people there. You know, it's not going to cost you very much money to do that. In fact, if you want to come, I'll give you a place to work and operate in our community because I want you to have a fair assessment of what is going on. I'm not saying these reports are incorrect. Don't get me wrong, I'm not accusing anyone of doing anything. I'm simply saying that I believe your investigation will be incomplete without coming on the ground and listening and sitting and talking with the people in the Oak Ridge community. Please do that. DR. OLEINICK: Well, we're hoping to hear from the community. I thank you very much. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Next we're to hear from Mrs. Emma Craft. EMMA CRAFT MS. CRAFT: Hello, my name is Emma Craft and I'm from White Bluff, Tennessee. I want to thank you and President Clinton for making this day possible. But most of all, I would like to let you know how it feels to wake up one morning to hear on the news, TV and radio, and read in the papers that you were in a radiation experiment at Vanderbilt Hospital with several hundred other women nearly 50 years ago and to learn that it could have caused the death of my baby from cancer. I'm talking about the radioactive iron experiment at Vanderbilt in the late '40s and the follow-up on the mothers and children in the '60s. I could not get through to the DOE hotline when I tried to call and get in touch with them when I read about it. So, I contacted my senator, Senator Sasser. He answered my letter. He went to Oak Ridge and he read a copy of the follow-up report. He then came to my house and told me he believed that it was my baby who died of cancer. In the meantime, a reporter came to my house and let me know -- let me see the report. He wrote a story about me and my family for the newspaper. I started getting calls from other women who thought they might have been in the experiment. I called Vanderbilt for my medical records and even with Senator Sasser's help, I was not able to get them for several months. My youngest daughter was a beautiful, happy healthy baby. She died at age 11 from a rare cancer that started in her right thigh and took almost three years to kill her. In the follow-up study, the researchers described the death of an 11-year old girl with a rare cancer of the right thigh and said it was probably caused by the radiation dose she got before birth. No one can ever convince me that this was not Carolyn. I want you to tell President Clinton that I want an apology from somebody and I want some answers. I want to know why they did it to healthy women and healthy babies. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. I mean, we -- this is obviously of great concern to the Committee. This is a true radiation experiment that we are definitely looking into. MS. CRAFT: Thank you. I hope you don't stop until you get to the bottom of it. DR. OLEINICK: We're trying. Thank you very much, Ms. Craft. MS. CRAFT: Thank you. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Mrs. Mary Hamm and Mr. Ron Hamm. MARY and RON HAMM MS. HAMM: Good afternoon. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. My name is Mary Hamm. I didn't have to read that off because I do know it. (Laughter.) MS. HAMM: I'm from Nashville, Tennessee. I was one that was in the study of 829 pregnant women who were given radioactive iron at Vanderbilt University's prenatal clinic. In the year 1946 and '47, I was pregnant with my son Ron, who accompanies me today. I found out like everyone else did. I had seen the story in the newspapers and heard it on TV, but I really didn't want to think too much about it because, you know, it kind of startles you when you find out something like that. And so, I didn't watch it too closely because I knew I had been to the Vanderbilt Hospital for the birth of my son, which by the way, was born on my 22nd birthday. My friend, Mildred Wright Newsome, called me and said she had found out she was part of the experiment. She knew I had been there with her. We were there at the same time. I called Vanderbilt and asked for my medical records. They were sent to me and confirmed that I had been a part of a group who received the radioactive iron. A letter was attached saying I definitely was in this study. All I can ask you on the Committee is this. What if you had been a young 21-year old mother -- and as I look at the panel, I see two men and one lady. So you wouldn't be in that mother category, but your wife could have been. So what if you had been a 21-year mother, or your wife, whose husband had gotten out of the Navy just a little while before then, very happy to be at home, thought he had a good job back with the railroad where he worked before he went in service, was there three years. But I was pregnant with a very wanted child. I had one previous child. I'm not ashamed to say this, I was a child bride. My daughter who accompanies me today is six years older than him, so you don't have to count all that. (Laughter.) MS. HAMM: But anyway, we were very happy that we were going to be parents. And what if you decided to go to Vanderbilt Prenatal Clinic because of their reputation as the foremost medical center in the area and you paid for your prenatal care and your delivery? What if you saw a different doctor each time you went and respected and trusted anyone in a white lab coat? It's something to think about. What if you were given a cup of liquid and told to drink it with nothing more said about it? What if you loved the unborn baby so much that you did everything that you could possibly do to protect it. Did everything the doctors said to do. And during the pregnancy, I had no choice of what they did to me or my child who really was at that time a human being and not a guinea pig or a little white rat. It's something to think about. What if almost 50 years later you find out through the TV and the newspaper that you were given a radioactive substance that not only went into your body but the body of your child and went to very important organs like the blood, the liver and the spleen? What if you find out now that normal iron supplements were actually withheld from you and all the other 829 mothers during your pregnancy so the radioactive iron would be absorbed more? What if you remember things now like being told not to breast-feed your baby because your milk is no good? What if you suddenly in your late 20s start having trouble with your teeth and gums and had to have all your teeth removed? It was such a painful two years or maybe three that I went through all of this with, I mean, pain, untold agony, and had to finally have surgery on the gums. They did not know what had happened because I had very nice teeth, looking on the outside, but underneath they were rotting out beneath the gums into the lower part of my teeth. But not only did my teeth and gums give me much trouble, but I had many other health problems at a very young age after the birth of my son that can linked to this. Such as a mass of precancerous tumors, which thankfully were removed in time. Thyroid problems, bruise easily, and so many more things that I might could mention but I won't take the time. This is a pattern I've discovered in talking to some of the other ladies that was in the experiment. And I feel like that I and my son was an innocent victim -- and I do say victim, because when someone violates you in any way, especially your body and the body of your child, you are a victim and so are they. Thank you. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. (Applause.) MR. KLAIDMAN: Just one brief question. In the course of your stay in the hospital, did anyone ever say anything at all to you -- MS. HAMM: No, sir. MR. KLAIDMAN: -- about a nutrition study or anything of the kind? MS. HAMM: No, sir. MR. KLAIDMAN: Nothing at all? MS. HAMM: We were never told not one thing. MR. KLAIDMAN: Okay. Thank you. MS. HAMM: When you would go -- you know, we would go in, and like I say, I was a 21-year old girl, and hey, drink this. DR. OLEINICK: Right. MS. HAMM: And you take the doctor's word. You think, well, hey, I'm supposed to do this, so I did. DR. OLEINICK: I understand. Thank you very much, Ms. Hamm. They may not have been mothers but I am. Thank you so much for coming here today. I think we're going to have to move on to the next because we're -- the time. Thank you. MR. HAMM: Do I not get equal time as well? DR. OLEINICK: Oh, I didn't realize you were going to speak as you are listed together here. MS. HAMM: Oh, I thought he had seven minutes the same as I did. MR. HAMM: It's up to you. MS. HAMM: By all means, I would have let him have my time had I known. DR. OLEINICK: Well, the way it's listed here, I thought that you were sharing the seven minutes. That's okay, please. MR. HAMM: I am Ron Hamm. Thank you for hearing me. Thank you for allowing us to come and please let the President know that we appreciate these hearings. I am disappointed in some way that a victim is not part of your committee. I feel like that voice should be heard on a committee level. Someone who has been victimized. Today, we've been hearing testimony from people who were involved in numerous experiments, accidents, et cetera. This is a conglomeration, I suppose, of all nuclear medicine has to offer and all the horror stories. I have only one -- as Dr. Bibb might say, only one dog in the fight. And that is, that there were atrocities perpetrated against American citizens. My mother walked into a clinic with full appreciation for the medical establishment. For 40 something years, I have been a fan of Vanderbilt. Dyed in the wool -- I bleed gold and black because I felt they were a great institution. They've disappointed me greatly. They have withheld information. I don't know the physical ramifications or the medical ramifications of early experimentation of drugs and radioactive materials. I doubt seriously that many people know the full import of it. I do know however that we were violated in the worst possible way. I was a fetus, I had no choice. My mother was an unsuspecting young lady and she had no choice. But what did happen to her in that room, in my estimation, was tantamount to rape. She walked in defenseless, offering herself because her husband and millions of others like him had been defending this country so that we might continue to have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and in her pursuit of happiness walked into a place where it appears that the bandwagon of nuclear medicine had begun to run amuck. People were jumping on the bandwagon to get the grant money. That's a foregone conclusion. I think we're all aware of that. Experiments were conducted. They may or may not kill me. I'm 48 years old and as far as I know I'm a healthy man. I'm very well adjusted. I don't have any problems basically that I know of, a few minor ones. I have a son who has had terrible problems. I don't know if this can be genetically transferred. All I know is that somebody is going to have to take responsibility. Thank goodness, Dr. Bibb said the government knew all about it and accepted their part of the responsibility. We'll see. They don't seem to want to. I do know that my mother was violated; I was violated and somebody, somewhere needs to pay a price for that by way of apology. Emma Craft, just before us -- let me say it like this. In raising two teenage sons, when it came time to speak to them of the issues of sex and of respect for women and respect for other people's privacy and rights, I told my sons it takes two people to have a pregnancy. It takes a male and a female. If you contribute to the pregnancy of a young lady simply for your pleasure, you take the responsibility of that child until he's 21 years old or out of college. There will be no getting out from under it. There will be no walking away from it. That child will forever be your child. You fathered it and you will be responsible. My mother was violated and somebody is going to have to stand up and say I took my pleasure of medical research on this woman; therefore, I accept the responsibility of her continued care and I apologize to her for violating her human rights. I'm not so sure -- I know about the codes -- the Nuremberg codes. I've studied World War II history and I know the atrocities. I don't know how all this stacks up, but I do know that in the ethical scheme of things and in the moral scheme of things, nothing my friends, and I mean nothing, is more sacred than the rights of every human being on the face of this earth to make their own choices -- to make their own choices. Reverend Thomas spoke before me and said do the right thing. I believe you're trying to do that and I certainly appreciate you hearing us today, and I want the President to hear the same thing. That we had that right taken away from us, that right was violated and we expect an apology. We expect someone to be responsible. We expect someone to stand up and say I take the blame and I take whatever responsibility is attached to that blame. Thank you for your time. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. Mrs. Venia Lazenby. VENIA LAZENBY MS. LAZENBY: I do have faith in you, each one of you, even those who are not here today. I'm a trusting soul and you have to prove to me that you've done me wrong before I lose faith in you. I want to thank you for being here in Tennessee. I want to thank you for being on the committee. We're proud of Tennessee and I'm so glad that we have a president and a vice president who believe in what you're doing. Of course you already know my name. I was born on April 18, 1928. You'll have to excuse me because this is very difficult. DR. OLEINICK: Please take you time. We know it's difficult. Take your time. It's all right. MS. LAZENBY: I was married November 14, 1945. My husband was employed at the VA hospital and they advised him to take me to the Vanderbilt Prenatal Clinic to get care for our unborn child. To this marriage was born three sons. I found out by listening to the TV and the newspaper in 1994 that I was given radioactive iron by Vandy in late 1946 in about my third or fourth pregnancy -- month of pregnancy. Vanderbilt has no medical record of my existence, but his birth record notes that he was born there and who the physician was. After the birth of my first -- of my only daughter, I had nonmalignant tumor removed from me at that time and the baby had lots of problems. I was age 32. Soon afterwards I had a hysterectomy because of more nonmalignant tumors. In my late 20s, I developed a rash and was treated for years for eczema. I was referred in 1993 to Vanderbilt's dermatology clinic and diagnosed with leukoplakia. I have to use very strong medicine. I worked for 30 years in government and 11 years of that time, I worked part-time for a fine hospital in Nashville. I love my God; I love all people everywhere; I'm very active in my church and in missions and have traveled abroad and in 39 states in the Unites States. I'm very active in the American Business Women's National Organization and I'm active in local politics. All of the blood -- all of the above run through my blood. I believe in my country, but my government has let me down. Like I said, I'm a trusting soul. It takes a lot to get me upset, but this German-American Indian lady comes out of the corner fighting when she's had enough. I was used as a human guinea pig. We did not know whether our baby was going to be born dead or alive and I was told this at the seventh or eighth month. We had moved into our new home in February of '47. The nursery was set up, but we never knew, my husband and I, whether we would ever get to use it for this child. Neither the government nor the scientists at Vanderbilt valued my life or the life of my unborn child. It took me 47 or more years to find that out. Enough is enough. The Vanderbilts of our country need to be stopped and stopped now while the field is white until harvest. I never, never, ever want anyone to go through what I've gone through, or my oldest son, or my deceased son, or my living son and my living daughter and my living grandchildren and my relatives. This is indeed an honor for my being allowed to be a participant today. Thank you. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. You did very well. Ms. Reba Neal. (No response.) DR. OLEINICK: Is Ms. Neal here? MS. NEAL: I'm coming. DR. OLEINICK: Take your time. REBA NEAL MS. NEAL: My name is Reba Neal. I'm Mrs. Jack Neal. My husband was in the Army. He got out of the Army; he went to Oak Ridge and got a job in 1946. We married in 1947. We had one child and we lost two children before we had another one that lived. Both of our children have heart problems, thyroid problems. My husband died seven years ago. I had him in all the hospitals I could. I took him to Nashville to the VA hospital and a Dr. Adams there told me and my husband he had been in too much radiation. Which I knew that, but I said, Dr. Adams, would you put that on paper and he said, no, ma'am, I will not and don't ask me. So I kept him in Nashville and then I took him to Mountain Home in Johnson City. They all told me the same thing but nobody would put it down. His heart was so bad he got till he couldn't walk. I had to lead him to walk. I had to go to work to support our family. I'm a retired district Avon manager. Now I can't even walk. I've got heart problems; I've got thyroid problems; ever kind of a problem that can be mentioned I have it. And if there's any compensation that could help because nothing could ever bring back my husband because he was my pride and joy. We had been married 48 years. I'm as married today as I was the day I said I do. And my children are suffering with heart trouble, thyroid and everything. So, if there's any help to get this taken care of, I'd certainly appreciate it because I'm living on food stamps. I don't even have an income to support me. I thank you for my time to speak. And I wanted to do this. I've kept ever piece of paper that came out about this radiation and I began to call around to try to find out when I could come and say my piece about it. Thank you. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you, Mrs. Neal. We're very happy that you did come because as I said, everybody who comes here tells us something that helps us to understand what has happened. Are there any questions? DR. ROYAL: Yeah, one question. The various doctors that you saw, did you ask them why they would not put on paper what they believed to be the cause of your husband's illness? MS. NEAL: I asked him, sir. That's all I could do. I asked him in the VA hospital -- at both hospitals would they give me a note that said that's what was wrong with him and they said no. They tried to make it sound like he was mentally ill. My husband was the brightest man that I've ever known. DR. ROYAL: Thank you. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. MS. NEAL: Thank you. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Ms. Dot McLeod and Ms. Mary Lynn Stanley. You're listed together and I'm going to ask you if possible to share the seven minutes. MS. MCLEOD: We will. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. DOT MCLEOD and MARY LYNN STANLEY MS. MCLEOD: I'm Dot McLeod and I'd like for the record to show the correct spelling of my name. It's M-c-L-e-o-d. You wouldn't have been able to pronounce it correctly probably. So it's better it's spelled this way on the -- I get called a lot of things. But anyway, it is McLeod. This is my sister, Mary Lynn Stanley and we're from Georgia. Our father worked for Clinton Engineer Works in the '40s. We have a copy of his badge from 1947. We know that our family was here from '46 to '47 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. We suspect that he may have worked there earlier because the birth certificate for Mary Lynn in 1943 indicated that his occupation was a defense worker. We have photos that were taken while my family was in Oak Ridge and we'll be happy to provide copies if you would like them. They are photos that my mother held onto or either sent to other family members. My father died at age 64. He was a painter at Oak Ridge. My mother died at the age of 72 with leiomyoma sarcoma. My oldest sister was diagnosed in 1983 with two types of cancer. It was two different kinds of cancer. She had ovarian and cervical cancer. She died at the age of 45. The youngest sister that was at Oak Ridge died at eight years old. My mother and father had three other children after they returned to Georgia and I was the first one of those. The second one died after five days. Her death certificate stated that she had imperfect development. I and my younger sister suffer a lot of medical problems. I have numerous allergies to all penicillin, all the derivatives and IVP dye, tetanus, numerous food allergies. I've been tested and I have my results. My sister and I both have high blood pressure -- the one born after my parents were at Oak Ridge. My older sisters do not have this and they don't have the allergies either. All of the female granddaughters of my mother and daddy have had problems with fertility, abnormal uterine bleeding and abnormal PAP smears. One nephew has had tests that showed liver damage and most of the grandchildren have multiple ear and upper respiratory infections on a continuing basis. MS. STANLEY: When my father came to Oak Ridge in 1947, he brought his family with him. I think he might have been here before in '46. I think he was here before. I think he worked at -- my father wasn't a scientist. We were considered a transient family. We were placed in hutments or a trailer. We have photos of the trailer. We think that's where we lived. I remember being here. I was four years old. There's a photo there for you that you can see. There's my mother, my father and four children. Out of those people, myself, I'm still living and the baby, she's still living. But I've had a tumor. I had a hysterectomy in 1985. Mainly once you spoke about the grandchildren, my mother's grandchildren, they are my children, my girls. Every one of them are having problems. And the reason that I called the hotline to make these inquiries and to ask about it is because my mother is one of eight children. There is no history in her entire family that I have uncovered or that I have spoken to that have had any kind of cancer in their family. I have an aunt that's 83 years old and she's in relatively good health today, other than she broke her hip. My mother has two sisters and they are in their late 70s. I'm not sure of their exact age. All of her brothers -- as I said, there was nothing -- but I do know that I want to make one thing before my time is up. My mother never discussed what went on at Oak Ridge. I'm not a scientist, my mother wasn't a scientist, my father wasn't a scientist and we talk about secrecy. My mother carried all this with her to her grave. The only thing my mother ever told me was that they had advised her that no matter what she was asked to do, that no matter what happened to her, that she didn't have to worry, that they had the top scientists in the world at Oak Ridge. And I know that if they would ask her to sacrifice herself, she might have done that. But to have sacrificed either me or any of my sisters, no. I also know that I watched each one of my sisters die. I watched my mother die of leiomyoma sarcoma. I've done all the research myself. I've called the National Cancer Institute on information and leiomyoma sarcoma has been known -- has been proven that it's the result of radioactive iodine, ionizing radiation or whatever your terminology is. I know the type of cancers that my sister had, the two types are very common, but it's so rare that when I called the national statistics on cancer, they don't even keep up with those records. They say that's so rare -- you just don't have two types of cancer in one life time. I know the one sister that died. She was my little playmate. The doctors didn't even know what happened to her. They couldn't even tell my mother. My mother buried those children, and as a Christian, my mother never lost her faith in God. And I haven't lost my faith in my country but I'm going to tell you what, my government has let me down and I want some answers. I still don't have my records from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I don't have any records on employment, on housing. MS. MCLEOD: The only thing we've gotten is two employment cards and the last appeal was denied on July the 28th of 1994. MS. STANLEY: That's to stop the search for the records. MS. MCLEOD: Our records state that our father -- the employment card that we do have says that he was a BR painter. We have not been able to get anyone to tell us what a BR painter is. If there's anyone here from Oak Ridge that knows, I would love to know. DR. OLEINICK: Well, I think if you would assemble the information that you have, it's possible that we might be able to find out. In some cases the records aren't even there, but if they are, there might be a possibility of locating those records. I can't say. MS. STANLEY: I don't have a school record, a housing record, a medical record -- DR. OLEINICK: Right. MS. STANLEY: -- an employment record or anything. I know that we were here. MS. MCLEOD: I called about school records for my sister because she was in kindergarten in Oak Ridge and I was told that all the records prior to 1950, that the government had them and I would probably be lucky if I got them. DR. OLEINICK: Well, if the government has them, they are someplace. Some of the records that are very old, they are difficult to find. All right, thank you very much for sharing -- MS. MCLEOD: One other thing. When Mary Lynn called the hot line and got -- gave them all the information for their little questionnaire, the last question they asked her was our father military or civilian and she told them he was civilian and they said well, you just don't fall into this bracket. DR. OLEINICK: I'm not sure -- MS. STANLEY: I called the National Radiation Hot Line that was published in January and they asked me, you know, why did I feel like I was making the call. Then they asked me questions like who was my father, where was he employed, different things. Then when I got through, they said the only thing they hadn't asked me was my father there as a military or was he there was a civilian, and I said my father was there as a civilian, and they said they weren't interested in that because they were mainly studying veterans. DR. OLEINICK: Well, that -- I don't know who gave you that answer, but I don't understand that answer. MS. STANLEY: Well that's the answer I got. DR. OLEINICK: There are a lot of inaccurate -- MS. STANLEY: These are letters that I have sent just requesting records. DR. OLEINICK: Well perhaps you could talk to one of the staff people and we could get -- I think they're going to have to handle it to see what you have here and where we can go from here. MS. STANLEY: Okay. DR. OLEINICK: I don't think we can answer the question at this moment. But it certainly is something that we want to follow through on. MS. MCLEOD: We appreciate being here and we appreciate you listening to us. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. MS. STANLEY: Thank you for listening to the people. DR. OLEINICK: Before everybody gets up and walks away, we are -- I keep being handed changes in the schedule here. And we are going to listen to one more person before taking a break, Mr. Richard Vaughn. RICHARD VAUGHN MR. VAUGHN: I would like to share this with the panel. (Mr. Vaughn proffers documents to the panel.) DR. OLEINICK: Oh, thank you very much. MR. VAUGHN: My name is Richard Vaughn. I was born at Vanderbilt on December 15, 1946. My mother, Margaret Christine Vaughn, passed away on December 1, 1967 of ovarian cancer. She was unable to have other children after my birth in 1946. On January 29, 1965, Dr. Ruth Haigstrom sent a letter to my mother, Margaret Vaughn, advising her that she was part of a study of diet and eating habits while attending the Vanderbilt Prenatal Clinic between the years 1945 and 1949. This is the same letter that the panel has in their possession. The letter asked her to please fill out the medical questionnaire on herself and her child. In the first part of 1994, I learned that this letter was sent to most of the 829 pregnant women given radioactive iron and 771 pregnant women who were not given radioactive iron. This information went into a medical journal entitled Long Term Effects of Radioactive Iron Administered During Human Pregnancy. This had nothing to do with diet and eating habits which was indicated in this letter. There's no mention of radioactive iron. I was diagnosed with cancer of the colon in March of 1985. I received my medical reports and those of my mother from Vanderbilt on February 9, 1994. Vanderbilt's response was, and I quote, "Upon review of your family member's record, we found no verification that they were a participant in the 1945 to 1947 nutritional study that involved radioactive isotope iron." The letter my mother received from Dr. Ruth Haigstrom indicates otherwise. Vanderbilt has kept records of all pregnant women involved. They have lost or misplaced all research records that would give names of those women given radioactive iron, except for perhaps 250 to 300 names. And these women were given radioactive iron 59 in the dosage of 1.8 milligrams to 120 milligrams. Vanderbilt has refused to inform these people unless they call to verify if their name is on the list. They have refused to call these women who they know were involved in this experiment as of today. Since learning of defendant's outrageous conduct, I have suffered severe emotional distress and anxiety due to the uncertainty over whether myself and my mother were part of a group exposed to harmful radiation, or whether we were part of the control group that was not exposed. There has been an invasion of my privacy rights to my own body and my confidential medical information. I experience the inability to sleep at night because Vanderbilt University Prenatal Clinic did not feel it was necessary to get informed or voluntary consent of the subjects in this experiment requiring unknown levels of radioactive iron and other radioactive impurities. I would like to stress to this panel there was not written consent, nor was there oral consent. There was no consent whatsoever of these 829 women. They just were not told. I will have anxiety and fears for myself and my future generations because of genetic damage done by radiation. This emotional distress has been created by all defendants who participated in these experiments that had never been tested before on pregnant humans. I ask that this panel consider if this had been your mother given unknown amounts of radioactive iron without consent or knowledge, would you be satisfied with the reply Dr. Brill made in the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Reporter January 14, 1994. I quote, "The possibility exists that the observed hematology disease may be due to radiation damage; however, because of the low magnitude of exposure in two of these, three children who later developed malignancies who received below average exposure for the group as a whole, it is questionable that the outcome is attributable to the radiation exposures." What can be done to answer questions and fears? All women who were pregnant and gave birth at Vanderbilt Prenatal Clinic between September of 1945 and March of 1947 should be notified and informed of these studies. They have the right to know, even 50 years later. Also, a medical survey of this group should be done to relieve fears and anxieties for everyone. I find myself wondering whether my mother's cancer of the reproductive organs and death at the age of 47 years old was caused by the radioactive iron. I wonder whether the colon cancer that I suffered at the age of 38 was caused by the radioactive iron that possibly was fed to my mother when she was pregnant. I also wonder about whether my two children will suffer adverse reactions as a result of the radioactive iron. I plead with this panel to give the people involved in these experiments prompt and fair answers. Fifty years of silence and unanswered questions is too long. Vanderbilt did not do the right thing in 1946. Will this panel please do the right thing in 1995? Thank you. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Thank you, Mr. Vaughn. I think at this point, we'll take a short break for five minutes and come back. (A short recess was taken.) DR. OLEINICK: We'll start hearing from group four. The first speaker is Dr. Frank Comas. Welcome, Dr. Comas. FRANK COMAS DR. COMAS: I would prefer if this cartoon were taken off. DR. OLEINICK: I think that's a good idea, I'm sorry. Can we just get rid of this? I wasn't paying attention. DR. ROYAL: That's not part of your talk? DR. COMAS: I didn't bring any myself. My name is Frank Comas. I am a physician specializing in radiation oncology. In 1955, after having obtained my Board certification, I came to Oak Ridge on a fellowship to start the nuclear medicine with the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies. I stayed there for a little over a year and then I came back in 1958 as a staff member, having accepted a position that had been offered me. In Oak Ridge, I was attached to the Medical Division of the so-called -- what then was called the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies. They ran a small research hospital. Our role was to develop new strategies for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, usually malignant diseases, that involve the use of radiation either in the form of radioactive isotopes or using an external beam. Now parallel with it, there were also a group of non-medical scientists who were doing laboratory research in other areas such as chemistry, cytogenetics, instrumentation and so on. I was involved in a number of projects, some of which were successful and some of which led to no useful end point. For instance, we worked on the development of cesium-137 as a source for teletherapy machines and that project languished and finally went to nothing. The main reason being that we could never obtain sources with a specific activity high enough to make them really useful. On the other hand, we had a number of other projects that succeeded and I'd like to cite four of them. One is the use of iodine-131 in the treatment of thyroid cancer and other thyroid conditions, which is a method still being used quite widely. Two, the development of gallium as a scanning agent has been fairly successful. Three, the use of total body irradiation in small doses for the treatment of some types of lymphoma. And again, we still use this method. And four, high dose total body irradiation for the treatment of acute leukemia. Now this is a project that waxes and wanes. We developed it in the early stages, then it went more or less into a phase where nothing happened and then it was revived again and presently is being used in several medical protocols. Naturally, these treatments we developed have been heavy modified with time, and details of their application have changed from the way we did them at that time. For example, the dose of total body irradiation given today is about three times higher than what we used in the 1960s. But in those years, we were in what one might call unknown territory. We were breaking new ground and we had to, and wanted to, proceed cautiously and minimize patients' risks. The patient welfare was our highest priority at all times and every kind of treatment proposed and administered was thought to have the potential of improving their well-being and in some cases, of saving their lives. I keep on referring to patients because this is what we dealt with. We treated sick people. I hear now and then of cases where healthy individuals were given some sort of radiation with or without their permission, to do some studies and tolerance, radiation distribution or some other end. But I would not know about that, we never did it. Finally, I want to tell the Committee that it is with some sadness and also some annoyance, I must confess, that I am obliged to try to exonerate ourselves for something perceived by some as devilish acts where science was God and damn all other considerations. That is not the way we proceeded. We worked for aims we thought were worthwhile to advance diagnostic and therapeutic options. I felt, when I was in Oak Ridge, that we did honorable work, and I still do. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you, Dr. Comas. Some questions? DR. ROYAL: One of the documents that the Committee has come across and has studied is the Gore hearings, and in the Gore hearings there's a statement that the ORAU staff responded that they had carefully considered treating radio-resistant diseases with whole body radiation, but had declined to do so because there was so little chance of benefit to make it questionable ethically to treat them, that the benefit really wasn't enough to justify the bone marrow depression that was being seen in those patients. So apparently at Oak Ridge, a decision was made that radio-resistant cancers would not be treated with whole body radiation. At that same period of time, there were other medical institutions that were treating patients with radio-resistant cancers. What sort of discussions went on at that time between medical institutions about the ethics of lack of ethics of treating patients with radio-resistant cancers during that period? DR. COMAS: Well, I personally was not involved with any discussion of work done in other institutions. I was kind of hurt about it, and I was aware of it. We were rather cautious -- in fact, we were chicken really, you know. I think that we didn't accomplish more than we did simply because we didn't push hard enough. But that was very hard to do at the time. And you know, things change. Although we didn't do it except for lymphomas and leukemias. As you well know, now they are treating breast cancer with total body radiation. So we have come full circle and now we're doing things that would have been very questionable in those years, I think. DR. ROYAL: What I was trying to get some feel for is the depths with which a discussion of whether or not treating -- at Oak Ridge, at the time the decision was made not to treat radio- resistant cancers, I'm trying to get some feel for whether that was a decision that was made quickly after a few minutes of discussion or whether there were long discussions about whether it's something that you guys should or shouldn't be doing. DR. COMAS: There were very short discussions. This issue was maybe brought up once or twice, nobody thought it was a very good idea and that was the end of it. DR. OLEINICK: I guess another question that comes to mind is how did you make the decision for the patients as to whether they would be treated with total body irradiation versus some other therapy for the same disease? DR. COMAS: Well, you know, there are two sides to this question. There were two very different programs; one is the acute leukemia with the high dose. Now there, there were very primitive drugs in chemotherapy in those years, as you may know -- hardly any. We tried them, we didn't do very much -- nobody did. I mean, this was a disease that was about 97 percent fatal in those years. So we thought we were justified in trying something different which was total body irradiation. And we began with doses of about 300 R, those were exposure doses. And then we progressed a little higher and then we stopped because we were getting very few remissions. We tried several things, you know, we tried re-infusing lymphocytes, which is being done now, bone marrow transplants, and we got a certain measure of success. But you know, by the time St. Jude's Hospital came up with their results in the treatment of lymphocytic leukemia, and wow, you know, early they reported about 35 percent survival rate. Then they went higher than that later. So we thought we had no business doing this stuff any more, I mean this ineffective treatment here. So we stopped that. Now for the low dose lymphomas, these were -- we didn't pioneer that. This had been done earlier. Not very commonly, there were two or three places in the United States where it had been done. But I happened to have been trained in a place, which was in Colorado Springs, with Dr. Ricardo, who was very fond of total body irradiation. He thought it was great for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia and some lymphomas. So I came already prepared, you know, to continue that. And I found that the people thought gee, that's pretty neat, let's do it too. Now we didn't do it really quite the way I had been trained to do. The way we did it -- actually with did 10 R every day for a week, and then we kept repeating once a month forever, so long as the patient lived. We decided that this was kind of a funny way to do it. So we decided to begin with single doses and we tried two dose levels, 50 and 100. This is the exposure dose so the actual dose would be around 70 percent of that. And what we saw is we saw very little difference between the two dose levels and we saw again that we got some remissions, usually of short duration. But since it was such a mild treatment, the patients really did not experience any side effects from it, hardly. Some nausea in a few. So we felt that we could repeat the dose, and we did on some patients. Some got three or four times -- maybe not four, but at least two or three times, some cases got treated this way. If I may say one more thing about patient selection. DR. OLEINICK: Sure. DR. COMAS: Because there seems to be interest in that. The patient selection was a very longish affair. The staff met every Wednesday morning, this was like a religion that never was canceled, that meeting. And all the clinical people were there and some pathologists were there too. And we discussed all the patients, everyone that was in the hospital plus those outpatients that were going to start some sort of treatment. So every patient was scrutinized as to what -- you know, would this be suitable for this one, maybe not, et cetera. So it was each patient that was individually selected. DR. OLEINICK: Dr. Comas, I have the feeling that you have a great deal more information. After all, you were there. I would hope that you would be willing to, at some point in the future -- not today -- perhaps discuss some more of your experience with one of the staff people. I hope we'll have permission to contact you so that we can get additional insight from you. DR. COMAS: Surely. I was forewarned that I had five minutes and I could extend it to seven, so I tried to cut it short. DR. OLEINICK: I understand that -- no, no, I thank you for doing that. DR. COMAS: I'll be at your disposition whenever you need me. DR. OLEINICK: We don't expect to learn everything today. DR. COMAS: I'm retired now, I have plenty of time. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Ms. Ann Sipe. ANN SIPE MS. SIPE: I don't drink on the job, it's just dry in here. (Laughter.) MS. SIPE: Thank you for allowing me to speak with you today. My name is Ann Sipe and I was an Oak Ridge Associated Universities employee from 1966 to 1993. I am now retired and I am here as a very concerned citizen, because of all the work experience that I've had. I worked in analytical chemistry at the graphite reactor at X-10, quality control in the isotope lab at Abbott Laboratories, the radiation treatment studies at ORAU, I gave nursing support to low exposure total body irradiation treatments at ORAU. I testified in the 1981 subcommittee meeting in Washington. I also did radiation workers health studies at ORAU. I was custodian of the patients' charts and the microfiche until I retired in 1993. I was a nurse and on the teaching staff at the irradiation emergency assistance center training site at ORAU, and assistant registrar of the registry of radiation accidents that is housed in the REACs facility. I'm going to walk you through a little bit of what I had always noticed working with the patients. Patients were referred by private physicians and then with a conference of physicians at ORAU, the patient was admitted. They were given applications for admission, it was explained and then signed by patients and/or guardians, and witnessed. Patients were welcomed to the floor by a multiple group of nurses aides and orderlies and several patients that were family members of ORAU employees had also been admitted there all through the years -- a mother, a wife, a very small child. And these were families of ORAU employees. So many of the patients arrived so listless, pale, high fevers, very weak. And in a few days a big change could be noticed. Bright eyes, walking around and talking. The tests were beginning. Blood work, scans with isotopes which always had consent forms, bone marrows, x-rays and then the diagnosis was confirmed. Staff clinical conferences and using all the information from the testing, decisions were made on the tests and the treatments. Patients and family members were given information of findings and educated about their disease and the treatments planned at this time by physicians. Consent forms for treatment explained and signed by the patient, guardian and witnesses. I was there, I know. On the point of repeating the words of information and education, when a person has been given a diagnosis of a very devastating disease, there is a shock that encompasses the family and the patient. So it's important to repeat this treatment plan, so that they will have some control of their life. This was always explained in terms that they could understand and always were encouraged to ask questions at any time. Nurses, med techs, x-ray techs also helped with the information and education, as a support group. I was one of those. And I have written down the clinical staff and the research technical staff that followed and I'll pass that. Churches had groups in Oak Ridge that came to the hospitals twice a week bringing crafts, books, magazines, stationery, stamps, crochet, knitting, anything the patient would ask for that would make their stay better. Some patients had no family living close to Oak Ridge, so their visits were very limited. Oak Ridgers became extended families and was much enjoyed by patients. One of my sons who had a teenage diet of hamburgers and fries was very attached to one of the patients there, so a couple of times a week or when this young patient felt good, he would go up for the hamburgers, the teenage talk and the french fries and then have champion chess games. Other children collected Halloween candy and toys and surprises for everyone. When patients were allowed to leave the hospital for a few hours and no family members was available, a staff member would drive them. I've had pie at Shoney's, I've had to walk -- and I don't like to walk -- through arboretums and sometimes just drive around to see Oak Ridge, because some of these patients had retired and moved elsewhere and when cancer invaded them, they wanted to come back to this hospital. The staff baked cakes, made surprise presents and special foods that the patients asked for. At times ORINS/ORAU personnel would go to the houses of patients who had limited transportation -- and all of this is done with their own cars -- and bring them back for an outpatient day involving tests or treatments and then take them back in the evening. Some outpatients would miss their buses to the house and some of the staff members have driven as far as 80 miles to take them home. We were on standby at times to give blood that was needed very quickly to some of the patients. Several families in Oak Ridge opened their homes to patients and families to stay a couple of days for scans after the hospital room closed. It was so important for private physicians to watch over these patients, and we did know the importance of mainstreaming patients back into the general medical population. Family members were always allowed to sit within sight of the patient at treatment time if they so chose. I have taken their places at times. A parent would be allowed to hold a child for scanning or sit on the scanning table with a child. Some of the family members would stay with the patients and if they needed to go outside and walk, a staff member would step in and sit with the patient for awhile or even walk with them. After some patients were able to have outpatient treatments, they chose to have treatments in the evening or even all night. This would allow them control of their lifestyles. They were teachers, they were preachers, they worked at the plants and they were retirees. And some were primary caretakers of very ill people and their family. And it is important to note that a patient could refuse a test at any times. They were some times they just didn't want to be bothered and this was always respected by the staff. Churches had special funds for these patients and anything they needed, all we had to do was make a telephone call. One church bought a house which was close to the facility. I could call that church and within two hours, there was food there for the families and it was available to them. There was a support system between the patients. Young mothers who were away from their children gave love and support to the patient children who were alone for awhile. Grandmothers and grandfathers were able to watch over young adults with love. The older patients felt they were contributing to this special hospital. One gentleman told me he hoped to leave a legacy. There may be a reason he found the hospital, something new could be discovered, and it could help some child, maybe his grandchild, and then he -- DR. OLEINICK: We've reached the end of the seven minutes, so would you -- MS. SIPE: I've got a little more, it's very important. DR. OLEINICK: Okay. (Comment from the audience.) DR. OLEINICK: I've been told. MS. SIPE: -- and then looked at Ann and said "Maybe one of your grandchildren", and I never knew any patient that left the program. Some patients were very protective of their families and they really needed a lot of support from the people who worked there. This disease cancer is such a personal disease, and all of us took it so personal, trying so hard to help them fight. And I still get very emotional. It is very important to tell you the clinicians at ORAU sometimes found instead of a cancer that the people were sent there, they had found that another type of disease, pernicious anemia, aplastic anemia, and once a child had pesticide poisoning from his grandfather's barn. Proper treatment was given. Early studies of the positive contribution that isotopes can make made life spectacular. You can call it experiments, you can call it testing, you can call it studies. But because of these isotopes, I have a friend that had metastatic thyroid cancer in 1960 and asked to come there. She's alive and a nurse. My husband has possible cancer of the pancreas and stopping the surgery, I was able to get him into ORINS and it was diagnosed that he had a perfect pancreas because of these isotopes. Some young children -- and I'm nearly through -- some young children with a poor prognosis of two to six weeks with their disease was given sometimes an extra three to four years. Of course, some were not. Some young teenagers grew to be older, become mothers and fathers, before the disease won out. Some did not. Mothers and fathers lived to see children grown and become parents. Of course, some did not. Some patients died of unrelated diseases after the closing of this facility. Regardless of the time some had left, they were given hope for another day, another month, another year and many were able to live very productive lives. Some parents and spouses have called me very distressed about the negative media coverage and the government outlook. Their statements consist of "why are they doing this to us, we chose to come there." The security, the care and the interest that was felt by the patients at this hospital made their walk against this devastation so much easier. The hospital was a small oasis in their world of no hope. It was so full of the needs, able to fight for life and this allowed the patients to have hope. They were never given false promises but were promised that everything that possibly could be done would. And even with the heartbreak that so many families have had to carry all these years, there are wonders and happy notes. Many are still alive and are living good lives. We receive Christmas cards and letters and pictures. I was there, I was involved and I have to tell you these precious people gave to me so much more than I ever gave to them. They taught me faith, strength, treasuring of life, and about hospice before hospice ever existed for patients. I am so blessed to have been able to walk their path. I still to this day see their faces, I hear their voices. And for those not represented here today, I am their voice. Thank you. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much, Ms. Sipe, we appreciate hearing this. Ms. Freda Jo Burchfield. FREDA JO BURCHFIELD MS. BURCHFIELD: Madam Chairman and Committee members, I am Freda Burchfield from Morristown and I'm here to represent what I saw at ORINS. My son was a patient there, he was diagnosed in 1966, December '66, with chronic myelogenous leukemia and he was 12 years old at the time, and he lived until he was 15 and he did at ORINS Hospital. When he was diagnosed as having leukemia, we knew nothing of leukemia, so our family physician sat down and talked to us and explained a little about the disease. And we asked him at that point what we should do. And he said, well, there is no cure but there are a few places you can go for experimental treatment. And I said well, if this was one of your children, what would you do? And he said I would get him to Oak Ridge Hospital as fast as I possibly could if they would have him. So we said call the hospital, find out if they would like to have him. He did and they said yes, they would accept him as a patient. When we got to ORINS -- well, we knew when we were going it was a research hospital, we knew that that's the only hope we had. We felt if a cure came in time for him it would be through research. So we were thrilled that we were close enough to a research hospital. When we got there, we talked to the chief nurse, Ms. Sutliffe, and she explained to us about the types of treatment. She gave us this little booklet, general information about the hospital, and it describes the Medical Department, tells about it, and I know there's been some question about the NASA involvement. DR. OLEINICK: Uh-huh. MS. BURCHFIELD: In this booklet even then, it talks about NASA's involvement with the medical program there and what they had done. So if you want to see this, you're welcome to. The first treatment that Rick had was cobalt radiation to the spleen and this was very effective, it shrank the spleen and he got a good remission until July of '67. And then at that time, the doctor sat down with us, told us that he needed further treatment, gave us two options. One, we could go on to chemotherapy, which was very new and a lot of side effects, or we could try low exposure total body irradiation in the Letby Room. And we talked with Rick, and it was his decision along with us, that he would try the Letby, and he was the -- I think he was the only child that ever was in the Letby Room. But he was about 13 at that time and he was in there five days and nights. It was explained that he could come out if he wanted to, but to be more effective and get it over with quicker, he should stay in and he stayed in isolation for five days. We were able to monitor him on TV and talk to him. He had TV, he had a telephone, he could talk to us at any time. And this did not bother him. We knew before he went in that the information they gleaned from him, from his vital signs and all, would be given to NASA for their study of the effects of radiation on man in space. This simply consisted -- he had a belt around him that monitored his vital signs and he was very proud of this, that he would be a part of the space program. He had no side effects from the treatment. It worked for awhile. That was in July '67. In September of '67, he was put on Myleran until early '69 and it was at that point that his chronic leukemia turned to acute and he had to go on chemotherapy then. And he was on Vincristine, Methotrexate, 6MP, some of the same drugs that are still being given today. I also testified on the House Committee on Science and Technology in Washington in '81. Some of my thoughts about looking back at the hospital. I had very pleasant experiences in a difficult time there. The staff was very professional, always very professional. They were always there. There were plenty of nurses there, plenty enough to come and play chess with my son if he wanted to, plenty of the research people would come and talk sports to him and a boy that age, that was his main conversation. They had plenty of time. I remember just one little incident. Rick wanted to go home one weekend and the doctors always came around every day and especially on Friday, a large group of them were there. And Rick said to one of the nurses "well, how can I get them to let me go home for the weekend?" And one of the orderlies had brought him a rod and reel to take home, he loved to fish. So they said well let's pretend you're fishing. So they filled up the sink with water, put goldfish in the sink and when they came in to make rounds, he was sitting on the side of his bed fishing out of the sink. And the doctors got a big kick out of that. They were very human, they did everything possible to make these children content while they were there. That's just one example. I wrote at one point to the National Cancer Institute at Bethesda, told them my son's diagnosis and asked them what was being done in other parts of the country, just to make myself feel that we were getting the best treatment. I still have booklets that they sent back and letters and in those it described the same treatments that Rick was getting, and it mentions in one of them here that radiation was being tried. There was nothing new to me there, so I knew he was getting the best possible treatment. One thing that has -- one reason I'm here is because I think the press has been unfair to ORAU. They've only shown one side. 60 Minutes called me a few months ago about a program that they wanted to have, and I told them, as I have you, how I felt about it and what I saw there. And they were -- well, they weren't very nice to me. They said do you mean you still think that they did not use your child as a guinea pig, that they weren't more interested in the space program than they were -- and I said no, I was there, I saw what happened. So if you saw the program, it was all negative, they never called me back, they did not want me there, they only wanted to hear the negative. So I thank you for letting me tell you a little bit -- I don't know how my time is -- but if you have any questions. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much, Ms. Burchfield. MS. BURCHFIELD: You're welcome. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Ms. Barbara Humphreys. BARBARA HUMPHREYS MS. HUMPHREYS: Hello. I'm Barbara Humphreys. My mother and father both worked at the Oak Ridge plant. My mother was a motor/generator operator, chemical operator. My father was an assistant electrical control room operator. My mother was sent to a school for a year to learn her job. They worked there from 1943 until '45. At their pre-employment examinations, they were both in perfect health. In '45 when they were both very, very sick, they went downhill until death. My father died at 45 from cancer. My mother, at 52, her stomach blew up, she was very, very crippled with rheumatoid arthritis, she was in a wheelchair. My father worked at Y-12, my mother at K-25. I have, as of two weeks ago, radiation in my blood. I have had a blood disease since I was eight years old. My mother and father were told at that time that they didn't know what it was unless it was leukemia. I have fought this blood disease -- I'm 45 now. I have went through cancer therapy. I am fixing to, as of in two weeks, have to go through it again on a daily basis. My brother had surgery for cancer in '93. My sister, at age 13, had total kidney shutdown with Bright's disease. My daughter, who is 22, has bone disease that causes her hip bone to deteriorate. The girl wants to get married March 18. What I'm asking is for the government to take some responsibility for what they did to these people without telling them what they were doing to them. My mother was given some kind of cocktails, she did not know what they were, but I was born two years later. I'm a result of that. My doctors, I have been told that I have these diseases by Dr. Craig Layman, he told me two weeks ago I had radiation in my blood. Dr. Dudley Darr sent me to the oncology/hematology on Wise Scarborough Road for daily treatments which I'll have to go back for. Dr. Peter Carter was my doctor there. Dr. Craig Layman, Dr. Gilmer Reid in Knoxville. Okay, I have letters here from my sister, my brother. It took me three days to sit down and write how I felt about this. I could not write it for crying. I had to get in silence to write it. This is the information I got on my mother and father, I got it August 2 of '94. I have, on a daily, monthly basis, 30 to 40 calls each month to Washington. I just want something done. I want some compensation, I don't want a "I'm sorry", that isn't good enough for me, that isn't good enough for my daughter, that isn't good enough for my brother who is withering away -- that isn't good enough. I want something done. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you, Ms. Humphreys. As I said, any information that you can provide us would be welcome. And we thank you for telling us your story. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: The next speakers are Mr. Wilton and Mr. Earl McClure. MS. KITTRELL: It's Earl and Wilton McClure, and Wilton is the female. DR. ROYAL: We could tell that. (Laughter.) DR. OLEINICK: We can tell there's a female. I can only read what's in front of me and I'm sorry. MS. KITTRELL: I know. EARL and WILTON MCCLURE MS. MCCLURE: I'm Wilton McClure and I live in Toney, Alabama. I went through Vanderbilt prenatal clinic in '45 and I was there for two weeks for the birth of my child. I just learned a year and a half ago that I was part of an experiment. My daughter-in-law called me and told me about it. She called Vanderbilt to learn whether I was involved because she was expecting a grandbaby to be born soon. Vanderbilt told my daughter-in-law that I was given radiation. I remember taking a cocktail, I don't remember what it was, and I was not told what it was. I was also told not to breast feed my baby, although I did anyway. My son later developed cancer of the throat and in the brain. He died October 22, '94. In 1960, I went to the Baptist Hospital in Nashville and Dr. George Duncan removed a four pound tumor from my liver. I think my cancer was called by the radiation. I stayed in the hospital two months and three days. My bones are deteriorating. Since '83, I've broken my wrist, my hip, my arms and two ribs. I broke my ribs from sitting down too hard. It has really ruined my later years. I cannot get up by myself. Mr. McClure must be with me at all times now, or an assistant. We expected to do more when we retired, but now we cannot do anything. It is my hopes that this will never happen to anyone else again. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you, Ms. McClure. I understand how difficult that is for you and we appreciate so much your coming to tell us. It's important that we and the whole country hears what happened. Thank you. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Ms. Irene Sartain. IRENE SARTAIN MS. SARTAIN: Thank you, panel, for giving me the opportunity to speak up on this. I've had a cold, I hope I don't lose my voice. But I'm going to give it to you right to the point like it is and I have documents of everything I'm going to tell you. And it's not something that I have just written from memory of what happened. This is actual documents from Vanderbilt University where I went to have my first son. I went there in 1947, perfectly healthy 19 year old lady. And their records show that. Then from day one of delivery, I went downhill, and this is what happened to me. After delivery, I suffered from dehydration, choking, difficulty swallowing, anemia and I had hair loss, teeth loss. And when I say teeth loss, I didn't have them extracted, they fell out. I had skin rashes, treated for fibroid tumors, thyroid problems, damaged nerves, weight loss. No matter what I eat, I could not gain weight. And they stated in the records that they didn't know why that I just kept losing weight. I asked them what happened, you know, I wasn't like this before my baby was born. And they said well sometimes, you know, your blood gets low. They had me on phenobarbital, iron capsules, from 1947. I kept going back to the clinic through 1954 and was getting worse and worse and they said because of my low blood, that mad me extremely nervous. I said okay, what's making my blood low. He goes to talking to me about connecting light bulbs up to a battery. I said well what's this got to do with me. He says I'm going to send you to a specialist, so I said okay. Well when I go to this specialist, I see his name, psychiatrist. So I tells this doctor I'm sick, something happened to me when I had my baby but I'm not crazy and thank you, I will not waste your time or mine, and I left. (Laughter.) MS. SARTAIN: I'm still -- right today, I have to take high powered vitamins, I'm anemic, I suffer from fibroid tumors. And like I say, this is all in the records. I've got the actual documents, I made you copies, and I've got a stack of them. Okay, they said -- they gave me no food the first six days after delivery. So my husband come, I said you get me some food and some clothes or this hospital is going to miss a short tail gown, I'm leaving here. So he goes out and gets me a Krystal hamburger and a nurse come in just as I was about to bite it and she said you cannot have that, you're on a nutritious program. I said well you keep on with your program, I'm eating this. And I ate. Also, they would not let my baby nurse. And they said after I got home, for two weeks to strictly give him orange juice. And right today my son suffers from the same symptoms I did. Okay, I quit going to the clinic over at Vanderbilt in 1954. My druggist said you'd better get a doctor, you're going to die. So then I've been five private doctors and I don't mean once every six months or once every year. Sometimes two and three times a week. And I've got one of the doctor's -- records of that, a copy to show you. And the attorneys are supposed to have the others because they retired and they wouldn't give them to me but they said they'd give them. And they all tried to treat me for the same thing, right up through 1987. And then Vanderbilt tries to tell us that we were just on a nutritious program, that we wasn't in the experiment. And pray tell me if I went in a healthy 19 year old in their own writing and then you read the reports when I went back to try to get some help, that should tell you something right there. The record should speak for itself. That's all I have to say, thank you. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. Questions? (No response.) DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. MS. SARTAIN: If you want the records I have -- DR. OLEINICK: We certainly do. MS. SARTAIN: All right, thank you. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Ms. Mary Foster. Is she here? (No response.) DR. OLEINICK: Ms. Foster. No. Okay, then we'll move to Mr. Bruce Lawson and Mr. Jeff Hill. I will ask you to reach seven minutes together. BRUCE LAWSON MR. LAWSON: No problem. We have a prepared statement. My name is Bruce Lawson, I'm a Health and Safety Representative with Local 3288 of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union at K- 25 in Oak Ridge. We feel that these DOE plants have been using us as human guinea pigs since the first building went into operation in the early '40s. In fact, we now know from declassified documents that the reason the government sponsored human experiments in the first place and kept them secret was to fight workers compensation claims. We know that many of us workers have suffered high and prolonged exposures to several kinds of radionuclides. Although urinalysis, blood tests and various other physical monitoring has been done, we still have reason to believe that we have been and still are being lied to about the damages that have been done to us. I've worked at K-25 for 25-1/2 years and can remember when we were told the product won't hurt you, you can eat it, and similar statements. Not only were we exposed to radiation, but also a veritable witch's caldron of chemicals, solvents, acids and asbestoses with little and often no personal protection. I ask that you take this message to Washington. The very least the Department of Energy can now do for these workers is accept responsibility for what has been done and furnish them medical care for whatever life they have left. Thank you for listening. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. JEFF HILL MR. HILL: My name is Jeff Hill. I'm one of the Environmental Health and Safety Representatives for the Atomic Trade and Labor Council. We represent the employees at the Y-12 plant and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I'm a 20 year employee of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I would like to say that the Atomic Trade and Labor Council agrees with the Oil, Chemical workers in that we share some of their same concerns. And I hope to go on record as the shortest presenter today. I would like to echo Bruce's statement that we ask that the message go back to Washington that the very least that the Department of Energy can do for these workers is to accept the responsibility for what has happened in the past and to furnish them with medical care for whatever future they and we have left. That's all I have to say. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. Thank you for keeping the time. Ms. Brenda Lee. BRENDA LEE MS. LEE: I'm Brenda Lee, I have a different story. I was diagnosed with Hodgkins disease in December 31 of 1974 at UT Hospital, 26 years old and was radiated by Dr. Frank Comas, who was here. And the cancer did not -- it was not taken care of like he said and Dr. David Ange referred me to a program at UT -- I mean at the Institute of Nuclear Studies. I was poor, I was uninsured, I had no money and they told me I was terminal. I'm alive, 20 years today, but it has been 20 years of hell. I have cirrhosis of the liver, I have so many things. I have anorexia, I'm sure you can tell by looking at me. I have inflammation in my liver, I have anxiety disorders, delayed stress syndrome, depression, things I never had until I went to this place in Oak Ridge. And they gave me these things I've never even heard of until last year -- dysprosium, thulium, ebilium (ph) citrate. I was told I was having a gallium scan for tumors. Never knew and was never told why I was sent to Oak Ridge. And it is a lie when they say that they did these tests for people that was an experiment that says "I understand" -- I did not sign these things. My signature is on some of these things, I did sign for a tumor scan. My husband, my brother, an adult, was with me. It says "I understand that this test is not a treatment for my disorder, nor is it being done primarily for my benefit. Rather this test is for experimental purposes." I did not sign these papers, but yet I was given all this. Dr. Frank Herrath is my doctor. He says everything in my health is probably linked right back to Oak Ridge. I have been in psychiatric units. They say well you don't have a mental problem but, you know, what's the problem. I don't know what the problem is. I have been to every specialist, I have been to every kind of doctor. I have radiation plexopathy and neuropathy. That is nerve damage, from all the radiation put into my body. And don't get me wrong, I am glad to be alive, but there are days I wish to God I had never lived because I am in bad shape, I have never been able to do anything with my life. I have chronic fatigue syndrome, I have the thyroid, hypothyroidism. My breast has been removed and it was directly from radiation. Whether my radiation treatment or whatever, it doesn't matter, it's gone. I had cancer there, and I'm at high risk for leukemia and other opportunistic diseases. I have a low immune system. All my organs are gone from my body from tumors that were not malignant, my female organs were all taken out. My gallbladder is gone, my liver is destroyed. Who knows -- nobody knows. And I want to know why. I really need to know why. I need to know why I was sent out to Oak Ridge to be experimented with. They have records that they kept up with my urine and my blood for two years after that. I don't know who took that urine and blood except UT Hospital. I went to Dr. Comas in December of 1994, I called and requested my records. He would not give them to me. He met me there, he said no, you don't need to know, they're probably lost, you don't need to. What's the difference. Well, it does make a difference to me, it makes a big difference, because I want to know why they put me in this. Sure, I was poor and uninsured, I didn't ask for any of this. They could have let me died. UT, I was going to UT, supposedly the best place. Why was I sent to this Institute of Nuclear Studies. I have no idea. To this day, 1995. And I have heard a lot of lies here today and I'm upset. I know what happened to me and when they say that they did it for therapeutic values, there was nothing therapeutic and I have the proof on the paper. Although I did not sign for anything but a tumor and a gallium scan, which was for my benefit, I understand that. These other things, strictly studies to experiment with this stuff in your body, radioactivity. And the room they put you in out there, the total body, yeah, I remember all that. I don't know what it was about. It's true, I was a young woman with two children and I wanted to live, and I have lived. But you know, you've heard of quality of life and quantity -- my quality has been very poor. And I do want answers. I want to know why and I want to know what these rare earth studies are. I want to know what I can expect. I don't expect to live long, I know that, I've done been told. But I hope before I die, that somebody will give me an answer and that's what I ask from you all. And I do appreciate you hearing me. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Ms. Lee, I'm sorry you walked away -- just one question. You flashed up a consent form of some sort. MS. LEE: Yes, I have it. DR. OLEINICK: And I guess the question is -- it wasn't clear to me anyway, exactly what you were consenting for in that form, who signed it and what was explained to you before. MS. LEE: Nothing. I was told I was there -- DR. OLEINICK: Would you just speak, for the record into the microphone? MS. LEE: I was told I was there for a gallium scan. DR. OLEINICK: But what is that -- that consent form was for what? Is that for the gallium scan? MS. LEE: Yes, I have that, but that one I just read you was for dysprosium and I have read the paper -- there were 34 patients that were given dysprosium. These other things that were given me has never been mentioned, I don't know what they are except rare earth studies because Dr. Herrath run these down. But they have my signature on a consent form and I told them that I did not sign them, my husband, my brother was there. I never ever would have consented to something not for my benefit. I was a young woman, I was struggling to live. DR. OLEINICK: I appreciate that. It would be very helpful to us indeed if you would present us with copies of this material. MS. LEE: I brought everything that Oak Ridge would give me. DR. OLEINICK: This is certainly rather important for us to have. So if you would see that the staff will get a copy of that material. MS. LEE: I certainly will. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. Mr. Peter Lewis. PETER LEWIS MR. LEWIS: Good afternoon, panel. DR. OLEINICK: Good afternoon. MR. LEWIS: My name is Peter Lewis and in 1951 I was adopted by a military couple from an orphanage in Germany. From the time of my adoption, I was the subject of numerous frightening and painful medical events, both in Germany and the United States. Some of these events I am convinced were radiation experiments at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Each of these medical experiments are too long to talk about so I'm only going to touch on the radiation experiments. My father was first sergeant and troop commander at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. On September 20, 1958 he took a Scout troop to Walter Reed Pathology Building and we were put into radiation machines. We were told to lie down in the machine and to hold a type of device on our chest with a trigger on it. They would slide the doors shut while we were laying in it. And then we were supposed to pull the trigger. I was told by the man operating the machine that the machine would bombard radiation through us and then collect it below so they could calculate the amount of radiation our bodies absorbed. The experiments were conducted by Walter Reed Institute of Research, Division of Nuclear Medicine. This is the only occasion which I have a Department of Army photographs. I believe some of you on the panel might have seen some of the photographs already. One week later, both my sister and I were brought by our father to Walter Reed in the same Pathology building. We went deep into the basement. In the lower level of the Pathology building there was a radiation machine. This machine was much larger than the first few machines we were put into. My sister was placed in the machine first and I was waiting my turn. There were technicians operating the machine. Within five to ten minutes, one of the operators noticed a position of a dial on the instrument panel and I heard him tell the other technician who was taking notes on a clipboard, he said, "hey, you have it on 8." The other technician did not seem to notice or hear what the first one was talking about. So the first one said it again, he said, "hey, hey, you have it on 8, it's supposed to be on 4." At that, the technician took notice and turned the dial to 4. I went into the machine next. My sister who was in that machine died in 1991 at the age of 43. She had cancer from head to toe. She's buried 200 miles west in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Shame, shame on this United States government for what it has done to its citizens with these radiation experiments. Getting back to this radiation machine. Some of the pictures you've seen, we know you call it a body counter. This particular machine looked like an iron lung machine, it was three times the size. It had a huge radiation symbol right on the side of it. Possibly this could have been the very first CAT scan and my sister was overdosed in it. Sometime later, again I was taken to Walter Reed. This time I was kept in an isolation ward on the upper level. The ward consisted of about 20 beds, I was the only person in the entire ward. There was a corridor that connected the isolation ward to the laboratory. Various times, I was told that I was going to be taken into the lab for tests. I was always gassed into unconsciousness as they wheeled me down the corridor, so I can never remember exactly what happened inside the lab itself. And I ask this Committee if you could possibly please find out what happened to me in this laboratory. I was kept in the isolation ward for one week. The second day after I arrived there, I wanted into an adjoining ward. I was caught by one of the nurses and from then on out a guard was posted by me. During my entire stay, all of my urine and stool were collected. After the third day, they drugged me and I was kept in a semi-unconscious state. By the time I left Walter Reed, I had bandages on my left shoulder, my elbow, also on my knees, my sides were bandaged. And after one week stay at Walter Reed, I broke out with severe boils all over my arms. I had to take iodine pills and my mother had to find salt with iodine to put on my food. After the bandages were removed, I started picking at a spot on my shoulder, right here (indicated). And I pulled out a four inch piece of something that looked like a nylon filament. I pulled out a second piece, it broke. To this day, I still have a piece of filament in my elbow, which is visible. I showed it to my mother, she took it with a pair of tweezers and she placed it in a brown envelope and she said this has to go back to Walter Reed. Throughout my life growing up, I constantly had to go through tests and physicals at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Okay, the United States government used me as a subject of medical experimentation from the time of my adoption in Germany and as a child. I need not go into the personal horror, degradation and suffering that it means to be used as a human medical experiment. It is a heinous crime that should not go unpunished. I urge that you, the Committee members, propose that all victims and their families who were also victims, be permitted their day in court. In this country, the government and its organizations should not be allowed to subject helpless and unwary people, and especially orphan children from another nation, to the pain, horror and medical experimentation and then clinically and uncompassionately watch, take notes and then forget about it and then to leave the victims and their families live or die with the results. Thank you. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. MR. LEWIS: I wish to thank Hazel O'Leary, if I may please, for pulling the skeleton out of the closet and asking the people of this country to come forward with their radiation problems. DR. OLEINICK: We are all indebted to her. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much, Mr. Lewis. I think at this point we're scheduled for a short recess, and I emphasize the word "short" and then we will return and ask to hear from group five. DR. ROYAL: So five minutes? DR. OLEINICK: Five minutes. You heard it. (A short recess was taken.) DR. OLEINICK: The first speaker from group five is Ms. Gertrude Copeland. Please, Ms. Copeland. Is Ms. Copeland here? (No response.) DR. OLEINICK: Okay, if she's not here, I'm going to move on. Ms. Carolyn Szetela. Ms. Szetela -- oh, she's coming. Okay. GROUP FIVE CAROLYN SZETELA MS. SZETELA: I'm Carolyn Szetela, I'm a graduate student just around the corner at the University of Tennessee in the Medical Ethics and Philosophy Program. The reason I'm here today is I'm wanting to spend these seven minutes or so talking about some of my own observations and how people are responding to the experiment. And I want to present this to you with the hope that the public voice will inform the President's investigation. I also had the benefit of being at the Cincinnati hearing and I know you, Mr. Klaidman, I believe were there as well, and that really helped inform me as well, putting in the context of what we've seen today, that the story of how these experiments affected the American people is really very, very broad. and there is much, much more to be told than what we're hearing today. I do want to say that I appreciate the difficulty and the seriousness of the task of the President's committee. I know that you all are putting in some long hours and I believe are very affected by it personally as well. So I appreciate that. I hope that you will be responsive to all Americans as you carry out your task and not just the highly educated and effective persons who are presently involved in this issue. I know that it is extremely difficult for a 14-member committee to speak for a whole country, especially since the outreach agenda of the President's committee is really a small set of your investigation. However, I believe it is crucial that we try to educate, involve and respond to all Americans as we attempt to come to terms with the radiation experiments. I assume that it is your intention to educate the American public and represent them. And in this regard, I think we need to be sensitive to differences between the goals of the committee and the general American public. All Americans need to feel, with some immediacy, involved in this issue. We share the goals which motivated the experiments -- national security, research expertise and medical benefits brought by experimentation. And in this sense, I think we are all a part of constructing the environment in which the experimental knowledge was desired in itself. On the other hand, I think we're all also connected with the subjects -- families and loved ones who were harmed by the experiments. Although many of the subjects may have been selected for some sort of vulnerability, many of them were selected randomly as well. And in this regard, well all might have found ourselves in the position of the research subjects and their families. What I'd like to do is point to some of the simple American values that I think inform the general response to these experiments. I'll start with a very general principle indeed, it comes from the Bible actually -- do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And I believe that this is really a basic tenet of American morality in general, not just Christian morality, but that this is part of American life and has been, even at the time of the experiments. People believe that in many cases the experimenters would not have wished to expose themselves or their loved ones to the risks brought upon the experimental subjects. To the extent that this is true of some of the people involved in designing and carrying out the experiments, I think it's easy to demonstrate that they were violating their own moral knowledge. The second principle -- above all, do no harm. This principle reflects an age-old standard to which we have held our physicians, expecting them to act on our behalf and to expose us to no unnecessary risks of which we are not informed. As doctors recite the Hippocratic Oath, they swear to use medicine to benefit, and never to deliberately harm their patients. Connected with this principle is a third principle of trust in physicians. Doctors were regarded as having patients best interest foremost in their mind and as being above scrutiny. We hear people saying "In those days, a doctor was next to God." A doctor knew that he or she was entrusted with the moral responsibility to protect his or her patients. And to begin to sum up, I think you don't need to be a doctor or a specialist in ethics to know what is right. And American people do know how to judge the experiments. In this vein, I hope you will be driven by the simple, traditional American morality as a standard by which the experiments should be judged. Give ethical weight to these principles and not only to settle theoretical arguments that ethicists and professionals are prone to do. After all, ethics belongs to everyone. Finally, I'd like to note that people feel that they were betrayed and their stories denied by the government and by their doctors. And although we cannot undo the past, I think we can ease the sense of betrayal by exposing the past and addressing the hurt felt by those who were harmed. In the aftermath of the Nazi era, we criticized the German people for failing to investigate and acknowledge the role of leading medical scientists in war crimes, or to bargain from professional advancement. Let's learn our own lessons. We can move forward from our past errors by acknowledging them and dedicating ourselves to treating each other better, now and in the future. Thank you. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. You have most eloquently summarized thoughts that many of us have been having and, if you've followed the Committee, we've been discussing these issues at considerable length. And I thank you very much for bringing them up today. It's important to keep reminding us. MS. SZETELA: Thank you. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Ms. Sherry Huff. VOICE: She's gone. DR. OLEINICK: Are you sure? VOICE: Yes. DR. OLEINICK: Dr. Helen Vodopick. (No response.) DR. OLEINICK: Is Dr. Vodopick here? VOICE: I don't think she expected to go on until 5:00. DR. OLEINICK: Oh. All right, well, we'll go back through the list, that's fine. Ms. Doris Baker. DORIS BAKER MS. BAKER: Greeting to you. Ms. Gloria Nelson is going to sit with me. When I finish, then she will take over, if you don't mind. Greetings to each of you. My name is Doris J. Baker. I once again sit before you and will continue to sit before you as often as I can. I hope that you are hearing me loud and clear because our government, all the doctors involved and all the others who were involved in the deaths of thousands of human beings have to answer for what they did. When will the time come for someone to go to court, be found guilty and then sent to jail or the electric chair? Can someone answer this for me? Does anyone care about us at all? Are we ever to see justice? You have to think a whole year to decide if we are really worth getting conversation? Tell me why do you have to think about it that long? You have been through more documents than I have and what I have seen makes the hair on the back of my neck curl up. I used to think when I would watch the news that other countries had their troubles and say to myself, "gee, we are lucky to be in America, we have free speech, we don't have to worry about waking up to the government having us killed." But boy, was I wrong. We are being killed by the hands of our own government. They are paying hit men to kill us. Who knows, there may be a contract on you or I or maybe my children or your children. You see, I am sick but I am afraid to even go to the hospital any more. (Pause.) MS. BAKER: I'm sorry, but this is making me very tired. DR. OLEINICK: Just take your time and collect yourself. I know it's very difficult. We can wait. Would you like a drink of water? MS. BAKER: No, thank you. I can never, when they say we are going to admit you to the hospital, Ms. Baker, yes, I am afraid. I have seen people admitted to the hospital that say I am not sick, but the doctors say they are and some never get to leave there because they are being killed there. Does anyone care? When someone sees a real good doctor or nurse, they may be blackballed or even killed. They have even gone so far as to say that that doctor is crazy or on drugs. They are even killing people with medicine and all for what, to see their faces on the news. I have a good idea for the next war. As the soldiers capture the enemy, test them with this deadly mess. They tortured our soldiers when they captured them. That way you won't be killing any more of our relatives or friends, especially people such as myself, because I come to these hearings by letting my bills and other necessary bills go unpaid. This is a hardship on me and sometimes I don't know whether I am going or coming. You know, my memory goes too, but I keep on trying. I have so many money problems but feel that I must continue my fight along with the other families. These studies on human beings must stop. They must be appreciated for the people of this land. Time is very near and I hope to God that you make the right suggestions to the President. I hope that the President remembers the families who are suffering from the pain that this has caused. I also hope that he will come to us and see how we feel and to care how we feel. He hasn't as of yet come to us and said that he was sad for us and that he felt how we, the families, are doing since all of this mess started. I am proud of each and every one that is in our group because we have struggled hard and long to get where we are at this time. I hope that we didn't do it all in vain. Please take in everything that we have said and do the right thing for us. We deserve the conversation. You can't give us our family members back and I don't wish that you could. I would rather have my great grandmother back but I know that is impossible and I have to accept the next thing, to being paid. Oh, by the way, you have never said anything about getting us help. By that, I mean counseling. How we are holding up as family members. I keep asking myself do these people really care about my well-being because they don't show that they care about our relatives. I hope to God that you think of us and not the people that did the horrible things to our family members. Good day to you all and God bless. P.S.: You know I must be doing something right and doing good because I have been lied on, had my feelings hurt, even made to cry, but I am a hard woman and I won't stop my best until someone decides to make things right for us all. Thank you. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. I'm sure we understand how difficult this is for you. Questions? (No response.) DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. GLORIA NELSON MS. NELSON: My name is Gloria Nelson. I'm a member of the Cincinnati Families of Radiation Victims organization and I'm here to read two statements from two members of our group. "Ms. Zettie Smith, patient number 055, Ms. Lillie Wright. My mother, Lillie Wright, was admitted to Cincinnati General Hospital on August 23, 1965. She became very ill, she had a lump on her right breast. On September 18, 1965, she received 200 rads to the upper body. Localized x-ray therapy began on October 8, 1965. She received 2000 rads in 53 days to the left and right breasts. On December 1, 1965, x-ray therapy began on the inter- mammary chain and anterior and also posterior region. In 40 days she received 4000 rads. The family was not notified of this procedure. "How can a person treat another person like this? Both of her breasts were raw, her skin burned and black, her back was raw and skin burned, no appetite and she was in constant pain. She was able to take care of herself until the treatment started. Then further tragedy emerged. She died February 13, 1966 at 3:00 a.m. "This is a disgrace to treat not only my mother like this, but all the other patients in this manner. How can you trust someone like this? This can put fear in your heart and mine about doctors." Statement from Ms. Katie Crews, her aunt Louise Richmond, patient number 082 passed away from colon cancer in March 1968 and was only 49 years old. "My mother, Viola Macklin, one of Louise's older sisters, brought her from Cleveland, Ohio to Cincinnati, Ohio for medical care of her cancer at General Hospital. Instead of medical treatment, my aunt Louise unknowingly was used as an experimental subject at General Hospital in their radiation experiments. Within weeks of her admission her health rapidly and painfully deteriorated and ultimately led to her death. "Regrettably the news of the General Hospital radiation experiment has recalled many agonizing memories for myself and my family. The death of a loved one under normal circumstances is difficult but now with the added knowledge of my aunt's sacrificial involvement in the radiation experiment, my family members must relive the misery now with twice the anguish. "Various family members can vividly recall the evening visits to the hospital as we accompanied our mother to visit aunt Louise. The torturing cries of pain that greeted us as we entered into the hospital ward have become all too familiar to us. She would be lying in her hospital bed trembling and shaking from her agonizing pain so forcibly that the bed itself would be visibly vibrating. Throughout the visit, my aunt Louise would cling to my mother's arm crying and begging her to take her home. She would repeatedly say, "Please, Viola, take me home with you. I'm in so much pain, they are hurting me, they are trying to kill me." "The visits would always end with my mother tearing herself away from my aunt Louise only to hear her cry in pleading desperation as we walked away. For seemingly hours after we left the hospital and even after reaching home, my mother would cry from the guilt she felt for my aunt's severe pain and suffering. My mother would routinely rock herself to sleep while crying and humming spiritual songs to relieve the burdensome feeling of her most recent experience, visit to my aunt Louise. "After my aunt Louise's death in March 1968, my other would often ask us if they, the doctors at General Hospital, were really giving her the correct treatments for cancer. My mother would often recall the visits and continue to blame herself for the pain and anguish my aunt Louise had experienced. My mother carried this unwarranted guilt to her death and now we have been forced to carry this guilt as well in memory of my mother and aunt." Ms. Katie Crews. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much, we appreciate hearing the testimony. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Mr. Acie Byrd. Is he here? MR. KLAIDMAN: He was here a moment ago. DR. OLEINICK: Well we can come back -- MR. KLAIDMAN: Here he is. DR. OLEINICK: Oh, here he is -- Mr. Byrd. ACIE BYRD MR. BYRD: Good afternoon. I'm speaking on behalf of the Executive Committee of the Task Force and as a veterans representative on the Force, and I just want to share some observations that we've found in mobilizing people around the country and particularly the mobilization that took place here in Tennessee. A lot of the people that we talked to just gained knowledge of this since we've been talking and they didn't have an opportunity to become familiar with the literature, but I do want to share some things that I think they have expressed to me, and that the Task Force itself feels that the Committee ought to consider. First of all, you want to consider that this is an issue of civil rights and human rights. It's not just a question of testing and so forth, but a question of civil rights simply because it goes to the heart of an issue of whether or not there was informed consent and the fact that we live in a constitutional democracy. And to have these various tests and exposures done without permission from individual Americans says that it is definitely a civil right. And I think it goes without saying that it is also a human rights issue. And we think that the case in Cincinnati that Judge Beckwith sort of sets the stage for that, that immunity is not automatically granted, and we know that during the Nuremberg trials that there were people who were even hung as a consequence of their convictions, at least seven people were. And we know that the United States under President Truman established this Nuremberg trials that took place. And we think that this question should be looked at very, very carefully, as a civil rights issue and a human rights issue. Some of the concerns we have and some of the concerns that people expressed in outrage is the right to privacy, the equal protection under the law, the right to due process and the right to access to courts. These were some of the questions -- and of course, the resounding question is why -- why was this done. And I think it should be noted that -- and I'm sure a lot of people who testified today and everywhere we go, people are still asking the question why, why would the United States government or private contractors involve American citizens, subject American citizens to this kind of thing. And so we therefore feel that it's -- we had hoped that there would be an extension of the life of the Committee, although we know the complications that are involved in that. But we do feel and hope that you pass that on to the other element that's scheduled to take place, to be the successor to the Committee, that they examine the question of some of the issues that have not been covered. For example, we have not seen that many documents from the Defense Department. That's a very, very serious concern of veterans, that this has not been revealed yet. We've had some cooperation, as you well know, from the Energy Department, but we have not had that much from some of the other government agencies that were connected to this. So we'd just like to say that we urge that that be passed on to the President and to others that this report might go to. And with that, I appreciate what you're doing and hope you continue and hope that we examine these issues very critically. Thank you very much. DR. OLEINICK: Than you, Mr. Byrd. We appreciate you coming and reminding us of issues that sometimes we forget about. And you know, when there's such a huge amount of information, you sometimes lose the forest for the trees. Thank you. MR. BYRD: Thank you. DR. OLEINICK: Ms. Sandra Reid. VOICE: She's left too. DR. OLEINICK: She's no longer here. Sorry about that. All right. We have two additions to the list then. Susie Branham. BRENDA BRANHAM MS. BRANHAM: My name is Brenda Beasley Branham. Susie is a nickname. And I'm from Maryville. When I came in this morning, I was a spectator, so now I'm not exactly prepared, but here's my story. In 1945, my mother commuted from Gallatin, Tennessee to Nashville, Tennessee for health care because she was pregnant. I was born on January 30, 1946 at Vanderbilt University Hospital. Seven years later mother commuted again to have my brother there. She went to Vanderbilt the first time because she was a poor woman who wanted good health care. The second time she went because she trusted Vanderbilt and she still wanted that good health care even though there were good facilities then in Gallatin. My mother died 13 years ago. Today, I've heard you ask for documents. I am asking for documents that would let me know whether or not my mother was one of those test cases. My mother is dead, I can't ask her if she was one of these women. I believe she might have been a test subject because mother had always said that Dr. William Darby was her doctor at Vanderbilt. Nowhere in mother's records or my medical records is Dr. William Darby even mentioned. Mother had even cut pictures of him out of the newspaper. Why would Dr. William Darby, who had nothing to do with OB-GYN, and he was in charge of the nutrition project -- why would he have contact with my mother if not to give her the cocktail? Could breast problems that I have have anything to do with the testing? Could I have passed any of this on to my children? Do I need to take extra measures with my own health? I can't ask my mother. Can you give me documents to let me know one way or another if she was part of that testing? I believe she was because there's no way that she would have come in contact with him if she wasn't part of that testing. Thank you. MR. KLAIDMAN: Ms. Branham, have you formally requested your records from Vanderbilt? MS. BRANHAM: I have mother's medical records, I have my medical records. Even when I had surgeries later, I have the records. Nowhere is there any record of his being in there. MR. KLAIDMAN: But she referred to Dr. Darby as her personal physician? MS. BRANHAM: My mother talked about Dr. Darby being her doctor. MR. KLAIDMAN: If you would pass on the records that you have, your mother's records, to us, to our staff, we would then follow up and see if we can find out whether she was a member of the study or not. MS. BRANHAM: I would also like to add that later when I read in the paper that Vanderbilt had found their nutrition records, the first part of alphabet, I called up and I asked if they had found records for Beasley. Well, I'm sorry, but the first part of the letter B, we just didn't find them, they're missing. I said well it said in the paper -- well, I know, that we were supposed to have found all of them, but we didn't. DR. OLEINICK: Well, it is possible that some of the records are missing. But on the other hand, the staff would certainly be interested in following up to see if you are on any list that anybody has available. Unfortunately, this is part of the problem that we're faced with, is that records are old and sometimes they are missing. But they would certainly do the best possible. MS. BRANHAM: Yeah. But for mother to mention that many times that she had contact with him, you know -- DR. OLEINICK: You know that not everyone on the study was given the radioactive iron, I think that's important. It's roughly half were given the iron and half not. MS. BRANHAM: Right. Why would she have had contact with him at all? DR. OLEINICK: Because he wasn't the one giving the iron actually, as far as I understand the records. He was in charge of the nutrition part of it, vitamin supplements and that kind of thing, studying the vitamin levels, but as far as I know he was not -- MS. BRANHAM: Are you saying they were also given vitamins too? He was giving vitamins or what? DR. OLEINICK: They were measuring vitamin levels, yes. I don't know all the details, but not everybody was given the radioactive iron. That's the first thing to know. Even if she was part of the study, it doesn't mean that she was given the radioactive iron. MS. BRANHAM: Right. But that's what I want to know. DR. OLEINICK: I'm sure you do want to know that, and to the extent that that information is available, we would try to find it. MS. BRANHAM: Thank you. DR. OLEINICK: If you'll see one of the staff people. Anna Marie Herrod. Welcome. ANN MARIE HERROD MS. HERROD: Thanks. My name is Ann Marie Herrod, I have a Ph.D. in sociology from Vanderbilt. My questions come out of this hearing as an observer, and I want to ask each of you this one question. And let me preface it by saying that in observing the stories that have been given today, I see two contexts here. There's the context of research and the related institutions and then there's the context of the subjects who were subjects of experiments or of the accidents that have been talked about. And my question to you is how will you, each of you, weigh this information that you have been given that comes out of these two contexts, when these two contexts bear on the assignment of validity to these different types of information? Because in one context, you have information that's perceived as anecdotal, it exists mainly in oral history. Occasionally it's written down in personal journals. It's analyzed with tools of common sense, with wisdom of every-day experience and deep personal knowledge. It is shared only in a community of friends and family, and this evidence is powerful in emotion and its tangible effects on this group, but it's relatively powerless in the hierarchy of knowledge, which is something that you know about and I know about through graduate training. The other context is documented, and this is the context of the scientists and their related institutions. This context is documented in technical articles published in government publications. It's documented in official histories of these institutions. It's documented in referee journals, in impressive archives. And so how do you then weigh this information that comes from these two very different contexts and bring them together and come up with answers? Because I'm sure that's a problem you're aware of but I wanted to lay it out in order to hear how you're going to deal with it, how the Committee is going to deal with it because there is a hierarchy of knowledge, a hierarchy or assessment of what's valid and what is not, and it relates to the power of the institutions behind us. DR. ROYAL: May I attempt to restate the question to see if I understand the question? MS. HERROD: Sure. DR. ROYAL: Are you asking us how we're going to combine or weigh anecdotal information with technical information? MS. HERROD: I know that you can't -- it's like trying to weigh the relative merits of apples and oranges, but in a sense you have to do that because you're having to take the word of these people who have very real and deep experiences against the experiences of those who come out of those research institutions, whether they are the researchers themselves or staff members. How do you weigh one experience against the other when they seem to contradict each other? DR. ROYAL: I wasn't asking about the validity of the question, I was just asking whether or not I understood the question. And I'm speaking just as an individual because the Committee really is in the process of making decisions, and you're absolutely right that we're presented with one person that says one thing -- if we want to talk about the anecdotal realm -- one person that says one thing and another person that says the exact opposite thing about the same event. And I personally don't believe that the Committee is set up to be able to resolve those sort of personal differences where it's one person's word versus another. And the reason I don't think that the Committee is in a position to resolve those sort of personal differences is because if you look at the scope of our work, all the experiments, to get down into that fine detail, I think we just don't have the resources to be able to do that. So I wouldn't want to promise something that we can't delivery because, you know, one of the whole issues here has been trust, and if we promise something that we can't deliver on, I don't see how that does any good in terms of our trust. What I would hope that people would see the Committee's accomplishment is the fact that I think that we've gotten a tremendous amount of information into the public arena and I regard the Committee's work as a beginning rather than an end. I think anyone who is sitting in the audience who believes that we're going to be able to answer everyone's questions and address all of the issues to everyone's satisfaction is living in a dream world, it's just not going to happen. This is a beginning, it's not going to be the end. DR. OLEINICK: I'd like to echo that sentiment because I think when we all started working on this Committee, we -- at least I -- did not have any concept of how much material was out there, and as a matter of fact we're still learning more, we don't even know it all. I think that probably the greatest legacy that the Committee can leave is all of the information and its cataloging in a database that people are going to be able to continue to look at and study. All of this testimony is going to be there. We will not solve every problem. We are trying to look in a more global sense at the kinds of experiments, at the standards and practices of a particular era and to make, in a sense, a global analysis of these events. We are not going to be able to take it case-by-case. There's no way that the Committee can possibly do that, but the information will be there for others to follow up on. I think there's going to be information for individuals as well as historians and ethicists and scientists to continue to delve into for quite a long time. We were given one year. In one year, one couldn't do more than that. MR. KLAIDMAN: I'll retreat into the refuge of the staff and leave this to the committee members. DR. ROYAL: What a coward. (Laughter.) MS. HERROD: I know you're aware of this, but I just wanted to respond. I didn't expect you to be able to resolve every problem, every one issue, and I don't think anybody does, although it would be the hope of many people. But the problem with these two different contexts is the context or the people who are subjects and victims of accidents. They have a very difficult time gaining access to the documents that would give their case validity and that makes it an uneven ball game. MR. KLAIDMAN: Except that every document that we get our hands on almost immediately becomes public. MS. HERROD: And do you have any power to gain release of documents that up till now have been -- MR. KLAIDMAN: Classified? MS. HERROD: -- classified. MR. KLAIDMAN: Yes. DR. OLEINICK: We've asked for many documents to be declassified and many have been declassified. MR. KLAIDMAN: And have many declassified, yes. DR. OLEINICK: If there is no longer any national security need to keep them classified, in general, as far as we are aware, these have been or are being declassified. MS. HERROD: And you're able to help some of the people here who haven't yet -- DR. OLEINICK: Now personal medical records are another story. We cannot ask for anyone else's personal medical records, but we can help the people to identify how to get their own records. And then if they wish to make them part of the public record, they can give them to the Committee. But a person's medical records are their own. MR. KLAIDMAN: But that has happened as well. I mean, we do have the medical records of numerous individuals who have elected to give them to us. DR. OLEINICK: Right. MS. HERROD: Thank you. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: David Hetchpeth. Mr. Hetchpeth. DAVID HETCHPETH MR. HETCHPETH: I'm going to read a statement that is not mine but that of a man by the name of James Guy, who is the son of Ms. Eula Guy. And just for the record, if you need to know it, I live in Nashville, I'm a minister there and I work for Nashville Peace Action. Again, this is James Guy. "On December 21, 1993, a Newsweek magazine arrived at the home of my parents, James and Eula Guy. The cover story was 'America's Nuclear Secrets Exposed'. How proud my mother would have been that this horrible nightmare that has affected so many people in this country was finally coming out into the open. She did not have a chance to be proud that there was a possibility of us becoming a responsible nation. My mother had been buried that very morning. She had died of a very rare condition known as pseudomyxoma peritone -- if I pronounced that right. She had struggled with the disease that physicians knew little or nothing about for 18 years. She triumphed as long as she did out of a love for family, life and a determination that the country she had loved so dearly would assume responsibility for the damage it had knowingly inflicted on its patriotic citizens who were proud to be a part of the war effort in the 1940s. "It was her dream that the arrogance of our government would cease and the health concerns of all its citizens would take priority over bureaucratic cover ups. "My mother had suffered a host of odd medical problems since her work on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge in the 1940s. It was after a surgery in 1975, which resulted in a diagnosis of a rare condition known as pseudomyxoma peritone that my mother began to research her own health problems. It didn't take long for her to make the connection between her work at Oak Ridge and her health problems. She painstakingly researched all her medical records and actually felt some relief and enthusiasm that maybe something could help her since she now had the probably cause for her severe bouts of anemia, bizarre skin and hair discolorations and other problems. "The ignorance of the medical community on the issue of radiation exposure was more frustration than the illnesses. She persisted in her efforts to get some answers. She began communication with a Dr. Shirley Fry of Oak Ridge Associated Universities in the mid-1980s. Her purpose was to obtain information about possible exposures she received in the buildings she worked in at Oak Ridge, and to discuss the study being done on Y-12 women workers. "She was met with polite but patronizing responses from Oak Ridge Associated Universities and the Department of Energy. The one she found most incredulous was being informed that the study on the women of Y-12 was too difficult due to women marrying and changing their names. She wondered if the government had recalled that U.S. citizens of working age have one social security number for life. All in all, the Oak Ridge and Department of Energy employees tried to discourage her from pursuing what she knew was true. "As she became involved in organizations founded by survivors of radiation, she became aware and even more frustrated by how big the cover up was. My mother's concern was never financial gain, but one for humanity. It was unbelievable to her that a government of the most progressive country in the world could have such blatant disregard for its citizens. She felt strongly that if the arrogance is never confronted, it will never stop. "Her medical history, in her own words, is attached. She wrote it in June of 1992. In August of 1992, she had another extensive surgery for the pseudomyxoma peritone. The surgeon, never having seen the disease misdiagnosed her with ovarian cancer. When we explained to him the history of her disease, he remarked that there was no way she could have been exposed to radiation and have had normal children. I constantly battle anemia and my sisters and I all have had problems with infertility. "After our own research at the University of Michigan Medical School library, we located a doctor in Washington, D.C. familiar with her disease. She flew to Washington, D.C. in September of 1993 for another surgery, which was to be her last. She died at home in Michigan on December 17, 1993. "As a family who is missing an extraordinary wife, mother, daughter, -- my grandmother survives my mother at the age of 97 -- grandmother, sister and aunt, we cannot say we are proud of the manner in which the United States treats its citizens. We are, however, grateful for those who listen and are working for the changes that are so desperately needed. "We are extremely grateful to our local branch of Physicians for Social Responsibility and Sane/Freeze who invited my mother to address a joint meeting of their organizations on August 7, 1993. Weakened by her disease and the futile chemotherapy given her, she related her experience of her work at Oak Ridge in the 1940s, and her own shock at being part of one of the most destructive forces ever developed by man. "After years of having the, quote-unquote, professionals from Oak Ridge and the Department of Energy discourage her attempts to get them to open the records to the public, this was her D-Day. "With sincere gratitude, signed James Guy and Debra Guy Hill." DR. OLEINICK: Thank you very much. I want to make sure -- (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Let me just tell you what I think the rest of the schedule is, because I keep getting updates. I'd like to know is Dr. Vodopick here? (No response.) DR. OLEINICK: She apparently thought she was going to speak at 5:00, it isn't quite 5:00. MR. KLAIDMAN: She's not coming. DR. OLEINICK: She's not coming, okay. then as far as I know, Cooper Brown -- Mr. Brown, we're adding you to the schedule to make a short statement please. COOPER BROWN MR. BROWN: Thank you. My name is Cooper Brown, I'm the Director of the National Committee for Radiation Victims and the Coordinator -- you know this already -- of the Task Force on Radiation and Human Rights. I'm actually here to introduce into the record two statements that Sandra Reid was going to submit. Sort of at the last moment it was handed to me, she got sick and had to go home. One statement is by Paula Elofson-Gardine (ph), the Executive Director of the Environmental Information Network in Colorado. And in her statement, which I'm not going to read, she raises concerns about activities at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons facility that she wanted to make sure were brought to the Advisory Committee's attention, both with regard to off-site contamination and a number of worker issues, some of which, as she sets forth in her testimony, she believes falls within the Committee's jurisdiction and concern with regard to experimentation on the workers at Rocky Flats. The second statement is a short statement from Freddie Boyce of Massachusetts, who, as I think you may recall, testified once before, before the Advisory Committee. He's raising some concerns now on behalf of a few other members of what once was called the Fernald Science Club. So those are the two statements. And with their introduction, it leads me to a larger point that I'd like to make on behalf of the Task Force. And that is -- and in raising it, I would like to commend the Advisory Committee for the hearings, the field hearings and this genuine concern and outreach, to receive testimony from experiment victims and others who have been adversely affected by radiation exposure. But in raising that and bringing that up and commending the Advisory Committee, I think the two statements I've introduced also bring up a point and that is that the Advisory Committee, we hope, will recognize that the work of outreach is by no means complete. This concern has been raised before, but as the Rocky Flats testimony indicates, people are concerned that the Advisory Committee was not in their region so that people there could have testified. Certainly members of what once was the Fernald Science Club and the Rochester community are concerned that the Advisory Committee did not hold hearings up there. We've made efforts on our own to get some of these people to some of the hearings, but it hasn't been easy. And this then gets to a larger point that, you know, we truly hope the Advisory Committee does not ignore, as you now begin the work of preparing your final report, and that is, as I brought up at the last meeting of the Advisory Committee, the work of outreach has to be taken seriously. It's inescapable that -- from our perspective that those who were experimented upon, and their families, must be found if there's every going to be any effort to truly assess the damages that occurred here. And we feel, as I've mentioned to the Advisory Committee before and I intend to mention to them again and again, is that outreach to find experiment victims and their families is inescapable in light of Section 7 of the Nuremberg Code, which, among other things, mandates and I quote, "Adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability or death." Given the latency periods that we're talking about, we submit that this is going to require the Clinton administration and the U.S. government to launch a massive outreach effort to find these people, even if the risk that they have been subjected to is only slight. The fact that they were subjected to the risk is what invokes the Code at this point. These people are going to have to be found and brought into the discussion of, among other things, what are the proper remedies that are to be provided to those who actually were injured. Thank you. DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: On my list it seems that we are going to be greeted by -- the Task Force on Radiation and Human Rights would like to say something or sing something to us at the end. This is what's on my list. Do I know something about this? A song. Well then, those who are participating in this event -- HOWARD M. SWITZER MR. SWITZER: I have a short song and a long introduction -- not very long. DR. ROYAL: It seems that ending this Committee meeting with a song is a much nicer way to end it than by having a federal officio officially -- DR. OLEINICK: We tried to avoid the federal official at the beginning. We're trying at the end, but -- DR. ROYAL: We're still going to have to do it, I'm sorry to say, but I like the idea of a song better. MR. SWITZER: I wonder how is the best way to -- where should I stand to do this? Well, this is a story about a Tennessean named Vernon Keel, he was an ace fighter pilot in the Korean War and then later in the Air National Guard here in Tennessee. And in 1957, he was asked by the Air Force to do a special mission and he was to fly out at a certain time, out of the Nevada desert at a certain altitude, at a certain speed and certain time, and when he got there, he was to lower the face shield on his flight suit and put his gloved hand over his eyes and when he did, there was a flash of light so bright he could seek the skeletal structure in his hand. And then he was ordered to land at the Scott Air Force Base, I believe it was, and taxi to the far end of the runway where he was met by about 30 people in rad suits who hosed his plane off for half an hour. He had flown through the cloud of an atomic explosion. He was then lifted out by one of these cherry picker machines and carried across the wet tarmac, sat down, brushed off, sent home. A number of years later of course his body was full of cancer and when he tried to get some help with that, he was unable to get any help with that. He had flown a top secret mission, they didn't have any record of this mission, and we don't help National Guardsmen and you have to be employed by the federal government to get these benefits and -- but over the years the records I suppose piled up pretty high but he never got any remuneration before he died, but I wrote him a song. (Singing) "I've always been fond of aviation, Tried to do my best, defend my nation, Hazardous duty occupation. Ah, but honey, it's good to be back home. I was there for the H-bomb detonation, Did what I was told, no explanation, I was not comprehending radiation. Ah, but honey, it's good to be back home. I saw my whole life go flashing right before my eyes, The way they say it does just before a fellow dies. And I'll die broken-hearted knowing my government lies. But honey, it's good to be back home. I still carry that contamination, And you can see here in my degradation, VA won't pay remuneration. Oh, but honey, it's good to be back home. That's right honey, it's good to be back home." (Applause.) DR. OLEINICK: Thank you. That was a wonderful way to end this meeting -- well, it's not quite over until Jerry Garcia comes up here. Sing for us, Jerry. MR. GARCIA: Well, literally on that note, I'll adjourn this meeting. (Whereupon, the meeting was adjourned at 5:00 p.m.)