The Plutonium Files (66 page)

On his way out of town, Brues decided to pay a “social visit” to Elmer. He got directions to Elmer’s house from the post office. Fredna was at the zoo in Dallas with her grade-school class, but Elmer was home and pleased to see Brues. Elmer said he would be willing to return to Chicago for another examination as long as he didn’t have to fly. Several weeks later Brues contacted Elmer’s physician to find out if he had informed Elmer of the injection. The doctor told him, “The patient was aware of the injection, and wasn’t much concerned, although he did not know what it was that had been injected.”
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Despite the ethical abuses and the potential negative publicity, the AEC decided to continue with the exhumation program after a committee of outside consultants agreed the scientific results were worth the risk—provided enough bodies could be exhumed. Eugene Cronkite, a Brook-haven National Laboratory scientist who had studied the Marshall Island residents exposed to fallout following the 1954 Bravo shot, wrote: “If all were exhumed and total body plutonium determined along with tissue distribution it would be of great importance to do so even over the refusal of the next of kin.
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However, if only one or two are feasible, the interest is proportionately less and would not justify the adverse publicity of resorting to court action to reverse exhumation refusals of next of kin.”

Most of the families did refuse to grant permission for the exhumations, but the Center for Human Radiobiology eventually succeeded in exhuming the bodies of Arthur Hubbard, the first Chicago patient injected with plutonium, and Fred Sours, one of the Rochester patients.
On a rainy morning in June of 1975, Hubbard’s body was exhumed from his grave at the Mount Calvary Cemetery in Austin, Texas, by “two Mexican laborers” and J. E. Farnham, an Argonne employee. “As I sifted through each shovel-full I began to find pieces of glass and metal,” wrote Farnham.
⁵⁴
“This appeared to be the remains of a metal casket which had a glass viewing window. Eventually I began to locate pieces of very eroded bone.” Farnham packed the skeletal remains in plastic bags. He then asked one of the cemetery officials to go buy a “cheap suitcase” so Farnham could take Hubbard’s remains back to Chicago with him. “He came back unsuccessful. As it was late and I had only thirty minutes left to catch my flight, I changed clothes in the car, washed at the garden hose faucet, and requested Mr. Lozano to ship the remains as biological specimens via Air Express, and then quickly left for the airport.” Hub-bard’s remains were shipped to Chicago on Braniff Air Lines Flight No. 126 on June 12, 1975.

The Center for Human Radiobiology had obtained permission for the exhumation from Hubbard’s children. The consent forms state the purpose of the exhumation was to advance “medical and scientific research and education” but disclose nothing about the plutonium injection. Three years after the exhumation, one of Hubbard’s daughters wrote Jan Lieben, inquiring why her father’s remains had not been reinterred in the promised one-year time period. Andrew Stehney telephoned her and said that Hubbard’s remains were being shipped back to the cemetery. “I said that we had obtained new information about plutonium that we could not have otherwise obtained, and I thanked her for her cooperation,” Stehney wrote in a April 7, 1978, memo to the files.
⁵⁵

Several weeks later, when the snow and ice that had lain over Rochester’s Holy Sepulchre Cemetery all winter had finally retreated, a group of scientists gathered at the grave of Fred Sours, HP-9, the politician from Gates, New York. He had been buried in a metal vault and his skeleton was almost intact. “The skeleton and casket were in excellent shape considering a 31-year interment,” a report notes.
⁵⁶
“The skeleton was relatively free of soft tissue and, at most, only clothing material had to be scraped from it.” Sours’s remains were slipped into a body bag and shipped to Chicago. His body was reinterred in 1981 after remaining at the Center for Human Radiobiology for three years.

Albert Stevens’s cremated remains, which had been sitting in the bronze urn at the Chapel of the Chimes in Santa Rose, California, since 1966, were also shipped to the Center for Human Radiobiology on October 16, 1975. The consent form states only that the ashes were to be
used “for the purposes of advancing medical and scientific research and education.”
⁵⁷
Again, there was no mention of plutonium.

When Albert’s ashes arrived, Robert Schlenker examined them. “Those remains, as I recall, were a pulverized mass.
⁵⁸
It was impossible to identify what portion of the skeleton a particular piece of ash came from.” Much of the plutonium, he said, had “translocated” to points in the skeleton that were distant from cells sensitive to radiation. “I was at least able to tell that much, and that much, I think, was significant.”

What happened to the ashes after Schlenker finished his studies is not clear. A memo in Albert’s medical files indicates the remains were shipped back to the Chapel of the Chimes in August 1978. But the chapel manager said Albert’s ashes weren’t returned. “They left here in October 1975, and nothing’s ever come back.
⁵⁹
I’ve gone to the location and looked. It’s empty.”

Some of Albert’s ashes were transferred to a repository in Spokane, Washington, called the National Human Radiobiology Tissue Repository. The repository has tissue samples from about 500 people exposed to plutonium and other similar radioactive elements. Albert’s daughter, Evelyn, said, “It makes me sick to think of it.
⁶⁰
To use a person’s body while they’re still alive and then to continue. It’s so ghoulish.”

Fighting his real and imaginary ghosts, Elmer Allen continued to live out his days in Italy, Texas. About four years after he and Fredna had taken their whirlwind trip, he was admitted to the hospital after a bad drinking bout. Fredna had found him on the floor with a belt around his neck.
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Elmer denied having any suicidal tendencies but was taken to the hospital anyway. He had been in a fight over the weekend and had to have his left ear stitched.

Somehow Austin Brues, the scientist at the Center for Human Radiobiology, learned that Elmer was in the hospital and sent a memo to David Williams, the physician who had diagnosed Elmer as a paranoid schizophrenic. In a December 12, 1977, memo, he wrote, “In the event he should show terminal signs at any time, we would appreciate a collect call to us at Argonne.”
⁶²

Although information on the human radiation experiments occasionally made its way into obscure journals, the scientists managed to pursue their studies without drawing much public attention to their projects. This was due in large part, of course, to the deliberate efforts on the part of the researchers and their government funders to keep the experiments quiet. But the silence was also the result of the media’s complacency and lack of sophistication. Activities related to nuclear weapons involved a labyrinthine bureaucracy and complicated scientific and technical issues, and spokesmen for the nuclear weapons industry were adept at manipulating the press. Controversial information was difficult to obtain, and oftentimes documents were deliberately classified to keep them away from reporters. With tight deadlines and long obstacles, many journalists wound up reporting what they were told. Slowly, though, the wall of silence began to crack.

In the fall of 1971, Stuart Auerbach, a reporter for the
Washington Post,
began looking into Eugene Saenger’s experiment in Cincinnati. At the time, the total-body irradiation study was in its eleventh year and Saenger had become as optimistic as his old mentor, General James Cooney, about nuclear energy. In a statement to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy the previous year, he had declared that “any part of the field of nuclear medicine should be as good or better an investment than IBM or Coca-Cola”
¹

Auerbach contacted the Defense Nuclear Agency, which was the third incarnation of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, and requested a copy of the contract for Saenger’s study.
²
John Watson, a
contracting officer, suggested the reporter drop by the following morning, read the contracts, then select the pages he wanted copied. The conversation was amiable, but documents show Watson was worried.

Upon hanging up with Auerbach, Watson contacted Lieutenant Colonel John W. Cable, a veterinarian who was the DNA’s medical officer for the Saenger project. Together they put in a joint phone call to Saenger. Saenger informed the DNA officials that two television producers, a trade paper, and author Roger Rapoport recently had contacted him. “Dr. Saenger suggested that Auerback
[sic]
be referred to him as he could explain clearly the method of approach for the persons selected for the treatments under the research being conducted, as well as other matters concerned.”
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Watson then informed several other people of the newspaper’s inquiry—the DNA’s public information officer, the agency’s chief of staff, and its deputy director for science and technology. Later that afternoon he also placed a call to the Department of Defense’s Office of General Counsel. “It was agreed that the request should be handled in routine manner; that is, without delay and with low emphasis,” Watson later wrote in an October 6, 1971, memo to his files.
⁴

Three days later the story appeared on the front page of the
Washington Post.
Eugene Saenger was quoted as saying the total-body irradiation was a “helpful” way to treat patients, but a radiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Institute in New York City said the treatment “approaches what happens in an atomic accident.”
⁵

The story drew worldwide attention. The
Times
(London) published an editorial entitled “Hospital Wards Are Not Battlefields.”
L’Exprès
of Paris ran a story headlined
“Les Cobayes
[guinea pigs]
de Cincinnati.”

“The whole question this morning,” asked a reporter at a press conference three days after the story broke, “is whether we have guinea pigs in Cincinnati or not.”
⁶

“No, I do not believe we had guinea pigs in Cincinnati. Absolutely not,” Saenger responded.

“Did any of the patients die as a result of negative reaction to the radiation?” another journalist asked.

“Not insofar as we could tell. Some of these patients were quite ill and died, but not as far as we could see from the treatment,” Saenger responded.

Events moved quickly after the story broke.
⁷
Three reviews of the experiment began almost simultaneously: Senator Mike Gravel, a Democrat from Alaska, asked the American College of Radiology to evaluate
the experiment; the dean of the University of Cincinnati medical school appointed an eleven-member committee to review the project; and a group of junior faculty members at the university prepared their own independent findings. The experiment also drew the interest of Senator Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat who chaired a Senate subcommittee on health issues.

Saenger played an important role behind the scenes, according to documents released by the university in 1994. He helped shore up the University of Cincinnati’s defense of the experiment; he arranged the appointments for reviewers from the American College of Radiology; and he even helped the Defense Nuclear Agency polish a draft paper on the experiment (“…   would avoid the word
experiment
in this circumstance.
⁸
Suggest
study, investigation, research
instead,” he advised.)

The first panel to weigh in was the American College of Radiology. Saenger sat on four of the ACR’s subcommittees or commissions.
⁹
The group’s president, Robert W. McConnell, was a personal friend of Saenger’s and was clearly annoyed by Gravel’s and Kennedy’s involvement: “I have a certain feeling about the involved congressmen, but am trying to cut down on the use of copulative verbs,” he stated in an undated memo.
¹⁰

Not surprisingly, the ACR report was highly supportive of the experiment. Saenger’s study conformed with good medical practice, the procedure for obtaining patient counsel was valid and consistent with the practices of the day, and the program deserved further support. “The project is validly conceived, stated, executed, controlled and followed up,” the ACR panel concluded.
¹¹

The group of junior faculty members, next to present their judgments, was as critical as the ACR was supportive. Martha Stephens, who went on to become a fiction writer and a tenured English professor at the University of Cincinnati, hounded Edward Gall, then director of the medical center, for copies of the Defense Department reports after reading about the study in the
Village Voice.
When Gall finally gave Stephens the reports, she drove back to the English Department, pulled the papers into her lap, and began to read. “I read for about an hour, and afterward, it was as if I could hardly recognize what was around me.
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Everything I saw looked different to me,” she later wrote. “I was used to reading in plays and novels about tragic deaths full of pity and sorrow. But I was not used to
this
pity,
this
sorrow of powerless and sick people asking for help and then being brutally abused. Many of these deaths seemed to me executions. And they still do today.”

Over the Christmas holidays of 1971, Stephens and several of her colleagues analyzed the material, interviewed doctors, and wrote a summary of how the patients had died. The report, which has become known as the JFA Report, pointed out that twenty-one patients, or 24 percent, died within thirty-eight days of treatment. The group also observed that the TBI experiment began only after Department of Defense funding was in place and that the Saenger team had not published one paper in the general scientific literature on the efficacy of total- or partial-body radiation for cancer treatment. “Is it conceivable that in an authentic cancer research study, no results would be reported after eleven years and the radiation of 87 patients? If no pattern had emerged after the irradiation of 87 patients—indeed after 10 or 20—would this in itself not have been worth communicating to other cancer specialists?” the group asked.
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