Radiation Victims May Be Compensated

A state task force appears likely to conclude that Harvard researchers violated the human rights of mentally retarded children they used in Cold War-era experiments involving radiation, according to the Boston Globe.

The Globe reported yesterday that a draft report of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation task force recommends compensation for victims of the tests, which were conducted at two state schools for the mentally retarded.

The draft report does not stipulate whether the University should compensate victims or whether the state should bear the cost alone, the newspaper said.

"The research conducted on human subjects at or from the state school from 1943 and 1973, which involved the introduction of radioactive substances into their bodies, was conducted in violation of the fundamental human rights of the subjects involved," the report says.

The report also discounts the explanation offered by some that the tests--which were conducted without the subjects' knowledge--complied with ethical standards of the time.

Instead, the report argues that the experiments did not live up to the principles of the 1947 Nuremberg Code, which calls for the voluntary consent of any human subject of an experiment.

In fact, students in one experiment were told they would be joining a science club if they participated in an experiment.

To this point, Harvard has been linked toexperiments at the Fernald and Wrentham StateSchools for the retarded.

. A late Harvard Medical School faculty member,Dr. Clemens E. Benda, served as medical directorat the Fernald School while one of the firstreported sets of experiments took place. Benda'sname is on the published study in which theresults were recorded.

. In 1961 and 1962, a Medical assistantprofessor and a Harvard researcher gave doses ofradioactive iodine to "mentally defective"children ages one to 11 in an attempt to determinethe consequences of nuclear fallout.

This doses of radiation involved in theexperiments were relatively small, but manyspecialists associate an increased risk of cancerwith even small doses of ionizing radiation,according to the Globe.

"The amount and type of tracer materials used,"the draft report says, "create significant need tofollow up medical and epidemiological studies."

The report recommends that test subjectsreceive federal health benefits.

MIT professors were also involved inexperiments investigated by the task force. Thedraft report details correspondence during whichan MIT researcher actively spoke of recruitingchildren for an experiment for which he hadoriginally planned to use rats

To this point, Harvard has been linked toexperiments at the Fernald and Wrentham StateSchools for the retarded.

. A late Harvard Medical School faculty member,Dr. Clemens E. Benda, served as medical directorat the Fernald School while one of the firstreported sets of experiments took place. Benda'sname is on the published study in which theresults were recorded.

. In 1961 and 1962, a Medical assistantprofessor and a Harvard researcher gave doses ofradioactive iodine to "mentally defective"children ages one to 11 in an attempt to determinethe consequences of nuclear fallout.

This doses of radiation involved in theexperiments were relatively small, but manyspecialists associate an increased risk of cancerwith even small doses of ionizing radiation,according to the Globe.

"The amount and type of tracer materials used,"the draft report says, "create significant need tofollow up medical and epidemiological studies."

The report recommends that test subjectsreceive federal health benefits.

MIT professors were also involved inexperiments investigated by the task force. Thedraft report details correspondence during whichan MIT researcher actively spoke of recruitingchildren for an experiment for which he hadoriginally planned to use rats